"years of poor NHS dental treatment"

I had an extremely sensitive upper front molar for a year in 2006 but my dentist did nothing about it. I was very ill with ulcerative colitis at the time and severely anaemic. My tooth started hurting when eating and for a while after eating before Christmas that year and despite being very ill I struggled in to get something done. He looked at it and said it looked fine but he could put a gold crown on because I was sick I didn't have amalgam. I asked if he could do a white filling or a temporary filling because there was too much tooth left to put a crown on and I couldn't stay long due to my health. He refused both and I just asked him if it was safe to leave it not knowing what else to do. He said it would be ok. I went home and it started hurting severely during the Christmas holidays for several days I was in pain.. There were no emergency dentists for the whole time until it stopped hurting and even then when the nerve was obviously dead I couldn't have got to the nearest one and queued for treatment which was already to late.

That's only the start of the story. The tooth hurt on biting for a while and I went to the dentist again when the filling finally fell out because it was loose. Then a temporary filling was put in. Eventually later that year a partial gold crown was put on even though I told the dentist the tooth was dead. He just looked at the Xrays and did nothing else to determine if it was dead. He said they were inconclusive.

After the crown was on the remainder of the tooth soon broke off and I had to go back again. He then repaired the broken part with composite stuck onto the gold.

I asked if would stick and he didn't seem too sure. Not long after the repair broke off taking more of the tooth with it. When I went back again he admitted he had been unprofessional repairing it that way and said it was a disaster but he decided to level the tooth to teh gum and put a complete crown on. This seemed to work but the tooth was still dead with no root canal and hurt on biting sometimes. He did the crown with no anaesthetic and there was no pain. Nevertheless he still refused to accept the nerve was dead. I entirely lost confidence in this dentist. He has been rude to me and threatened to take teeth out when I complained of pain. The same thing happened with a lower molar before this and eventually he had to admit it was dead when pus came through the gum. He may have been able to save that one too if he had replaced the filling in time. He prevents me seeing the other dentist in his practice. When the tooth started giving me a lot more pain this year I finally had to go a private dentist and she found pus coming from around the tooth and determined it was infected. and would need a root canal. I have decided to get this done at the cost of £300 to £450 because I no longer trust the NHS dentist and I believe he caused me to need this root canal.

I may now need to also pay for another crown which will cost another 400 to 500 and I normally get free treatment. There are no other NHS dentists in my area either. He also made no allowance for my state of health and I felt he treated me disrespectfully.

Recently he also left a temporary filling in a back tooth for two and a half years, which was quite deep. There was little left and the dentine was exposed close to the pulp. The private dentist said this was unacceptable and filled it. He was eventually going to put a gold crown on which the private dentist also said was unnecessary. He also has left a wisdom tooth with a hole in it for the several years where a filling fell out

Sorry about the long story.