• 50-year-old Caroline Walker suffered months of excruciating pain and now requires extensive corrective treatment
• £5,000 awarded in compensation
Mrs Caroline Walker, a 50-year-old project officer from Hounslow, West London, has been awarded £5,000 in compensation from her local dentist with the help of specialist dental negligence solicitors the Dental Law Partnership.
Mrs Walker visited her dentist at Whitton Corner Dental Practice, Twickenham, West London, between August 2015 and December 2016.
“My dentist extracted a tooth in 2015,” Mrs Walker said. “I wasn’t happy living with a gap in my teeth so the dentist recommended fitting a bridge to fill the space left by the extraction. I thought it would be a routine procedure, so I went to see them in October 2016 to begin the process.
“This is when things started to go wrong. First, the dentist injected my mouth several times to try and numb it, but none of the injections seemed to work. They then started ‘preparing’ my teeth and gums for the bridge which was agony. I was screaming because the pain was so unbearable. The dentist just led me to believe the pain was a normal part of the process,” she continued.
Still suffering from the pain of the initial procedure, Mrs Walker returned to the dentist to have the bridge itself fitted a few weeks later in November.
“When the bridge was fitted it was unbearably painful,” Mrs Walker recalled. “It was excruciating. I couldn’t sleep or do everyday things because of the constant pain. I was experiencing shooting pains across my whole face. It was awful. I went back to see the dentist and told them how painful the bridge was, but they just prescribed antibiotics and said it was normal to experience pain soon after a bridge had been fitted. They told me it would subside in the near future.”
But the pain didn’t subside, and Mrs Walker was soon back with her dentist. The dentist adjusted the bridge and prescribed more antibiotics. None of this made any difference and Mrs Walker’s agony continued.
“By December 2016 I’d had enough and refused to see the dentist again,” Mrs Walker said. “I saw a different dentist who immediately indicated there were problems with my bridge. It quickly became clear my original dentist just hadn’t fit it properly, which was why it was so painful.”
Mrs Walker contacted the Dental Law Partnership. Analysis of her dental records revealed that her dentist had indeed failed to prepare for and adequately fit her bridge, which led to the pain she experienced.
“The whole ordeal was a nightmare,” Mrs Walker said. “I still can’t bear to think about it. I am still too traumatised to have the corrective treatment I need. And it’s all because the dentist wasn’t doing their job properly.”
Amanda Pietrusiak of the Dental Law Partnership commented: “The distress and pain our client experienced was unnecessary. It is our client’s position that if the dentist had carried out adequate treatment in the first place, her problems could have been avoided.”
The Dental Law Partnership took on Mrs Walker’s case in 2017. The case was successfully settled in 2019 when the dentist paid £5,000 in an out of court settlement. The dentist did not admit liability.