Source: Dr.Bicuspid.com By: Donna Domino March 10, 2011 -- The patient was insistent: All she wanted was to get her teeth whitened for an upcoming high school reunion. She came in for the $99 Internet special the dentist had run and mentioned a sore on her tongue, but she said it was recent, attributing it to a tongue-biting habit. The dentist did the procedure but advised the patient that she needed a follow-up oral exam. The patient eventually went to an oral surgeon who diagnosed the young mother with terminal tongue cancer. She sued the dentist who did the teeth whitening for malpractice, for missing her oral cancer. That case, Tale of the Tainted Tongue, was dramatized at the recent Chicago Dental Society Midwinter Meeting in a session highlighting the growing number of malpractice suits over missed oral cancer screenings. Anne Oldenburg, an attorney with Alholm, Monahan, Klauke, Hay & Oldenburg, which specializes in dental malpractice cases, participated in the mock trial. Ten years ago she didn't have many such cases, she told DrBicuspid.com. But that scenario has changed dramatically in recent years, she said, noting that she is currently involved in three dental malpractice cases. The mock trial was similar to a previous lawsuit she handled, in which a young man in his 40s died. "It was oral cancer that was clearly missed," Oldenburg recalled. The family settled for $750,000 because the children didn't want to go through the litigation process, but many death cases can reach $1 million [...]