• 32-year-old Nicholas Griffiths from Swansea, unnecessarily lost a tooth after local dentist botched root canal treatment
• Mr Griffiths was left with a gap between his teeth for nearly two years
• £9,000 awarded in compensation
In October 2014 Mr Griffiths visited Dr Bogdan Ploscar of My Dentist, Nolton Street in Bridgend.
“I’d never had any trouble with my teeth before,” Mr Griffiths said. “As far as I knew they were in good condition. I trusted my dentist as an expert, so when I first experienced toothache I thought Dr Ploscar would be able to help.”
Suffering from toothache, Mr Griffiths visited Dr Ploscar. The dentist said that root canal treatment was needed and carried out the procedure the following week. Dr Ploscar then placed a filling at the tooth. Mr Griffiths thought this would be the end of his dental troubles, but unfortunately this wasn’t the case.
“Initially my toothache stopped, so I thought Dr Ploscar must have solved the problem,” Mr Griffiths said.
However, while on holiday 18 months later in the summer of 2017 Mr Griffiths had to attend an emergency dental appointment. His tooth had cracked and the pain was unbearable. The tooth had to be extracted and Mr Griffiths’ agony continued for the rest of his holiday. Unfortunately, due to the level of infection, the dentist was unable to completely stop the pain.
“I was in absolute agony,” Mr Griffiths recalls. “I was still in pain when I left the emergency appointment as the dentist had to leave part of the tooth’s root in. It was awful”
“To think that this was avoidable is infuriating,” Mr Griffiths said. “If Dr Ploscar had carried out the root canal treatment properly then I wouldn’t have had to waste my holiday going to an emergency appointment. It really ruined what should have been a special time. I spent the majority of it in agony.”
“To top it off I then had to live with a gap between my teeth for the best part of two years after the tooth had been extracted. It left me extremely self-conscious. I was paranoid about people seeing the gap, when I laughed I would try and put my hand over my mouth. When I smiled I’d even try and smile to one side to avoid the embarrassment. I eventually had to pay to have an implant fitted,” he continued.
Amanda Pietrusiak 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 of his problems could have been avoided. We hope the compensation he receives goes some way towards paying for the additional treatment required.”