When Miss T, from the South East, suffered pain in her wisdom tooth, she did what many of us would do and visited her dentist for advice. Also like many of us, Miss T put her faith in her dentist, Dr R, to carry out what she presumed to be the relatively straightforward procedure of an extraction. Unfortunately, Dr R demonstrated gross dental negligence and caused unnecessary damage to Miss T’s mouth – some of which was permanent.
During the wisdom tooth extraction, Dr R failed to protect the lingual nerve which was subsequently damaged. This caused a permanent numbness of Miss T’s tongue – making simple tasks such as eating and drinking excessively difficult. Dr R also took an unnecessarily long time – two whole hours – to extract the tooth, putting Miss T at risk of complications such as infection. Despite taking so long to complete the extraction, Dr R also left the roots of his patient’s tooth in the gum for many months. Not only did this put Miss T at risk of infection, but also left her with difficulty opening her mouth and suffering with continuous pain down the left side of her face.
Miss T required further extraction to remove the root of the wisdom tooth and also required a lot of pain relief. The numbness in her tongue, meanwhile, is permanent and is something she has to live with as a result of Dr R’s negligence. Miss T approached the Dental Law Partnership and our expert team of dental negligence solicitors quickly assessed that she was eligible for compensation. After we fought her case, Miss T was awarded £25,000 to compensate for the pain, suffering and expense she had undergone.
If you have been a victim of dental negligence, contact our team on 0800 0853 823 to find out if you have grounds for a claim.