• 29-year-old Amy Coley, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, unnecessarily lost a tooth after her dentist botched root canal treatment
• She also suffered two years of severe toothache and infections when her dentist left a cyst untreated
• £13,500 awarded in compensation
Mrs Coley first visited Dr Colin La Fond at Oasis Dental Care, 79 Sandringham Road, Doncaster, South Yorkshire in October 2013.
“I’d never had any problems with my teeth before,” Mrs Coley said. “But I developed an intense pain at one of them. After four days of agony I managed to get an appointment with Dr La Fond, who performed root canal treatment and prescribed antibiotics. I thought that would be the end of the pain but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.”
Mrs Coley’s pain subsided, but only temporarily and a lump also developed at one of her teeth.
“I went back to see Dr La Fond the following month,” Mrs Coley recalled. ”The lump was causing me intense pain and I was very concerned. But Dr La Fond told me that it wasn’t anything to worry about and would subside if it was left alone. He prescribed more antibiotics to help the pain and sent me on my way.”
“But the pain didn’t stop. I was on antibiotics but they didn’t seem to make any difference. I had to take painkillers at the same time. I’d wake up in the night just to top up on painkillers, that’s how bad the pain was,” she continued.
Mrs Coley returned to Dr La Fond yet again, who this time carried out root canal treatment at the tooth where the lump was present. Unfortunately, his treatment still made no difference and after more months of intense pain Mrs Coley was back with him again. The dentist repeated the root canal treatment, but still her agony continued. Dr La Fond resorted to extraction of the tooth in April of 2015.
“The only reason I agreed to the extraction was because Dr La Fond told me that it would stop the pain,” Mrs Coley said. “I put my trust in him and let him extract it, but guess what? Two months after I was still suffering from the same excruciating toothache. I could also still feel the lump which never subsided. Dr La Fond just kept telling me it wasn’t doing any harm so didn’t require treatment.”
Mrs Coley finally saw a new dentist, who informed her that the source of her pain was actually a cyst, or the lump she could feel in her mouth. She was referred to hospital to have it surgically removed and her pain was finally cured. The initial root canal treatment that was carried out by Dr La Fond in 2013 was also clinically unsatisfactory and would need to be re-done.
“I can’t believe that I’ve lost a tooth because of Dr La Fond’s mistake,” Mrs Coley said. “The extraction was awful, I thought my jaw was going to break. To then find out that it was all avoidable is infuriating. Two years of absolute agony and sleepless nights that could have been so easily solved, it’s unbelievable.”
Tim Armitage 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. We hope the compensation she receives goes some way towards paying for any additional treatment required.”