Woman receives £7,500 pay out after losing a tooth
NewsPosted by: Dental Design 14th February 2018
The Grimsby Telegraph has reported that a woman from Grimsby has received a £7,500 payout after her dentist failed to diagnose a decaying tooth.
Michelle Willerton, 45, suffered such severe pain to the extent that she couldn’t eat on one side of her mouth, and the tooth became so badly infected that it had to be removed.
Michelle visited The Corner Dental Practice, the same one she had been attending since childhood, for a routine appointment in 2014. She said to the Grimsby Telegraph: “My dentist Dr Kokinov examined my teeth and took an x-ray. He said that I would need to come back in a month to have a filling placed on one of my teeth, but that everything else looked fine. I was not worried at all.”
Over the next year, Michelle says she began to experience severe pain in the left hand side of her mouth and a huge hole started to grow in her tooth.
Michelle said: “It was so painful. I couldn’t eat anything on the left hand side of my mouth and I completely lost my appetite because it was just too uncomfortable to eat. It made me feel really low.”
In March 2015, Michelle went to see another dentist at the practice who advised that she had a large hole in her tooth as a result of the infection, before prescribing her a course of antibiotics.
Wanting a second opinion, she decided to visit a dentist at another practice, who attempted root canal treatment as well as fillings, but the tooth ultimately had to be removed as it was so damaged.
Michelle added: “I was so upset, if Dr Kokinov had spotted the decay as he should have done in the first place then I never would have suffered all of that pain, only to lose my tooth anyway.”
Michelle decided to contact Dental Law Partnership, a solicitors in the dentistry sector, to speak to them about the incident, and after analyzing her dental records it was clear that her dentist had failed to spot the decay, resulting in severe pain, infection and the loss of her tooth.
She said: “the whole experience has completely knocked my confidence. Going to the dentist never bothered me before, but now I feel really anxious every time I have an appointment.”
Tyla Westhead, of the Dental Law Partnership told the Grimsby Telegraph: “What our client went through was completely unnecessary. If the dentist had diagnosed and treated the decay in the first place the pain and loss she suffered could have been avoided.
“We hope the compensation she receives goes some way towards paying for the additional treatment required.”
