• Mrs L experienced severe episodes of pain and discomfort on and off for 8 years.
• She underwent unnecessary procedures which could have been avoided and she will lose her tooth in the future.
• £2000 awarded in compensation
Mrs L suffered multiple episodes of pain when her dentist failed to perform a root canal treatment properly, this meant endless trips to the dentist, unnecessary treatment and she has been told she will lose her tooth in the future.
Our client had been having regular dental appointment for around 20 years with the same dentist.
In October 2010 however, our client made an appointment to see her dentist after she experienced pain in a tooth that had previously received a routine filling.
“My tooth was quite painful and so my dentist treated it for sensitivity which seemed to relieve the pain some”
But around 2 months after her last appointment, Mrs L’s pain had gotten significantly worse and had spread to the left side of her jaw. When she made another appointment to see her dentist she was prescribed with antibiotics. A couple more appointments were attended in 2011 before her dentist advised root canal treatment.
“I was desperate for some pain relief so when my dentist booked me in for root canal treatment in February, I was relived. I trusted my dentist after all these years of being treated by him. He put my mind at ease after he advised that route canal procedures are common”
Unfortunately for Mrs L her dentist then failed to perform the root canal treatment to an adequate standard and our client was left in severe pain when she went home.
“I knew there was something wrong, I had to go back to my dentist and I was just given some more antibiotics, I ended up in and out of dental appointments it was a nightmare, in the end I decided to finally see another dentist for a second opinion”
When Mrs L saw another dentist at the practice in 2018, she was advised that the treatment she received was so poor she would require repeat root canal treatment, a crown to help support her tooth for the remainder of its life but ultimately she would lose the tooth in a few years’ time.
“When I was told I would have to undergo more procedures to lose my tooth anyway after all of the treatment I had already received I was devastated! I felt so let down by my dentist after all these years. It is upsetting to know this could have all been avoided”
Becky McVety of the Dental Law Partnership commented: “The distress and pain our client experienced was completely unnecessary. If the dentist had carried out adequate treatment in the first place, all her problems could have been avoided.”
The Dental Law Partnership took on Mrs L’s case in 2019. The case was successfully settled in 2020 when the dentist paid £2,000 in an out of court settlement. The dentist did not admit liability.
