• Pain and discomfort after the unnecessary extraction with the need for future treatments.
• £5,000 awarded in compensation
• A woman from the south east left without 2 teeth when dentist extracts the wrong one.
Mrs S has been seeing her dentist for 4 years from 2014-2018. She had always been quite nervous of the dentist but fortunately never had much problems with her oral health before.
“I’ve always taken care of my teeth and I’ve never had any real issues, the dentist knew I was a nervous patient but I always felt that I was being taken care of and trusted my dentist.”
But in April Mrs S attended an appointment at her dental practice complaining of pain in her jaw. The dentist noted that Mrs S had a large cavity in one of her teeth so to treat this she was given a temporary filling.
Not long after our client still experienced pain and discomfort and was having trouble eating on that side of her mouth and so she decided to make another appointment at her dental practice.
At the appointment Mrs S was told by her dentist that the tooth would need to be extracted.
“I was very nervous as I’d never had a tooth extracted before but I trusted my dentist knew what he was doing”
It was then that the dentist failed to extract the right tooth and extracted another perfectly healthy tooth. Our client then had to endure the extraction of the correct tooth that was the source of pain, leaving Mrs S distressed.
“I couldn’t believe what my dentist had just done. I had told him which tooth it was and he ended up extracting another tooth that would have lasted years! Now I have lost 2 teeth instead of one and I’m only in my 40’s, I was devastated”
Unfortunately for Mrs S her problems did not end there and she had to make another appointment due to her mouth becoming swollen.
“I actually noticed a fragment of tooth left in the socket in my mouth, I was so distressed and upset, not only had my dentist removed the wrong tooth, he also hadn’t performed the extraction right and I still had bits of it left in my gum!”
Mrs S contacted the Dental Law Partnership. Analysis of her dental records revealed that the dentist had failed to use reasonable care a skill in the technical execution of the extraction and a healthy tooth was extracted in error. As a result Mrs S experienced unnecessary pain and discomfort and will need a replacement implant for the wrongly extracted tooth.
Kyle Padley 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 Mr S’s case in 2018. The case was successfully settled in 2020 when the dentist paid £5,000 in an out of court settlement. The dentist did not admit liability.
