West Sweden, TX- A dental patient in this sleepy Texas town is recovering from second degree burns after his dentist, Dr. Wallace C. Mumford II, DDS, a recent graduate of the esteemed Marquette University School of Dentistry, attempted to upright the man’s molar.

“ I was a little unsure when Dr. Mumford said he’d done this in dental school and it worked like a charm”, said the patient Mr. Randall Thompson. Mr. Thompson explained that his lower molar had been tilting forward for years and Dr. Mumford offered to upright the molar that same day.

Dr. Thompson attached a bracket to the tooth in question as well as the appropriate orthodontic wire and then asked Mr. Thompson to lay his head on a desk. Dr. Mumford then retracted Mr. Thompson’s cheek and placed a hot lamp a couple of inches from the patient’s tooth. Expecting that in a few minutes he would see the tooth straighten up, Dr. Mumford was surprised when instead Mr. Thompson began to squirm and whimper and complain that his gums felt like they were on fire.

We reached out to the head of the orthodontic department at Marquette University, Dr. Gracey Curette, for comment. “While uprighting a molar in wax under a hot lamp works wonderfully on a typodont in the ortho lab, it is not intended as an actual procedure in the real world.”, she said.  A very flustered Dr. Mumford replied, “Obviously a regrettable rookie mistake on my part. Next time I’ll be sure to use an LED bulb instead of a halogen lamp.”