Criminological Analysis of Common Crimes and Misdemeanors in Three Dental Clinics in Tehran (2014-2022)

One of the job tensions of dentists is patient complaints. Although dentists mainly consider themselves only liable to commit dental violations, crimes are also sometimes committed in the dental places and the process of diagnosis and treatment, which deserves a criminological etiology analysis and consideration in the system of criminal, administrative and union response to these crimes and violations. Statistical studies on the complaint files registered in the three dental clinics of Imam Khomeini, Shahid Shokri (in Baqiyatullah University of Medical Sciences) in the years 2014 to 2022, where the demographic information variables of patients and dentists, including age, sex, education, type of patient insurance and the dentist, the scientific degree of the dentist and the experience and type of error or negligence or fault or intent leading to the complaint, have examined the error section, the shift in the occurrence of the error and the compensatory measures after the occurrence of the error, in addition to the possibility of meta-analysis from the perspective of the epidemiology of violations, it is worthy of analysis from the point of view Criminology is etiological. Reiterating the recommendation to increase the awareness of dentists in order to reduce errors prone to filing complaints, the weakness of innovation is often considered to be the dental statistical research.

The method of this article is analytical (legal-criminological) based on a statistical study (91 complaint files from dentists of three medical centers under study).

Ethical Considerations: 

In conducting this research, scientific trustworthiness has been applied to the statistical data and respect for intellectual property rights and adherence to all legal requirements.

According to the findings of the statistical section of the present study, based on several studies conducted at the research center for the prevention of oral and dental diseases in Baqiyatullah University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, 280 complaint cases, cases that had incomplete information or the dentist was not found guilty, were excluded from the study and 91 confirmed cases were investigated. Most of the complaints were of therapeutic type (79%). The most complaints were related to prosthetics (31.9%), endodontics (24.2%) and surgery (17.6%), respectively. Most of the plaintiffs were women (65%). More than half of the complaints were from dentists with less than 10 years of experience and most of the complaints were from general dentists (76%). The findings of the analytical part of the article, from the perspective of "Critical Legal Criminology" and "Opportunity Criminology Theory" and situation-oriented prevention doctrines, indicate the necessity of developing the criminalization of many behaviors neglected by medical regulations (resolving the quasi-criminal regulation gap) and the necessity of health insurance coverage for dental services in order to reduce demand. Low-income patients from dentists use low-quality materials, which generally leads to treatment failure and complaints against the dentist.

Situational prevention of violations and misdemeanors and false complaints makes it necessary to make video recording of dental surgeries - at least in hospital dental surgeries - mandatory. Respecting the differential rights of dental patients (women, the elderly, linguistic minorities, prisoners sent to dental centers) also necessitates the amendment of the legal duty of dentists to briefly and insufficiently explain the treatment steps to these special patients.