Claiming for dental mistakes
For most people, going to the dentist is an unpleasant experience at the best of times.
To begin with, there’s the feeling of having a stranger fiddling around, polishing, drilling and cutting (and worse!) inside one of your most personal body parts – your mouth.
Then there is the expense of it all – it is often difficult to find an NHS dentist and many people end up shelling out thousands of pounds for root canal treatments, bridges and dental implants.
And finally of course, there’s the immutable knowledge that you’ll be back in the chair in a few months’ time for your next check-up.
Dental negligence
However for some people that is just the beginning as they find out that treatment they have paid thousands of pounds for was done negligently.
Sometimes, the negligence is as simple as the wrong (healthy) tooth being taken out by the dentist, leaving the unhealthy tooth remaining inside the mouth – and you might be surprised at how common a complaint this is! Once a tooth has been extracted, unless it is placed immediately back into the socket, it will almost certainly be lost permanently.
I have known patients who have been seeing a dentist regularly for decades who discover that they have been suffering from periodontal (gum) disease for many years and were never given the appropriate advice as to how to combat this and to what treatment they required. Periodontal disease leads to bone loss which can cause the loss of multiple teeth. In severe cases, patients may even require surgery involving bone grafts before they can replace their teeth.
Other types of common dental negligence include failing to complete root canal treatment adequately, failing to diagnose tooth decay, failing to extract teeth in a proper manner (which sometimes can cause nerve damage) and providing crowns and bridges of inadequate quality.
Effects of negligent treatment
It goes without saying that if you have lost teeth to dental negligence, or if you require treatment that you shouldn’t have needed, then it won’t be cheap! The cost of a single implant alone might run to many thousands of pounds and it is not possible for many people to stump up this sort of cash.
However, the effects of poor dental treatment are not just limited to financial loss – there is also the pain, time and stress of going through additional treatment. Often there is also a psychological effect as well, with patients feeling isolated and unable to socialise as they used to. We all attach a lot of significance to how our teeth affect the way we look.
If you have been the victim of negligent treatment then we can help!
Here at Anthony Gold we have an experienced medical negligence team and I have particular experience of dental negligence claims.
I understand the desperation that people can feel when their dental treatment has gone wrong and I love to work hard for my clients to help them get the compensation and treatment that they deserve.