Dental Advice Needed

Anthony_MK

Hello all, I need some advice before I spend almost £1,700 that I dont have!!!

18 months ago my wife was removed from our local NHS (she was fee paying NHS) dentist for not attending a annual check up. As a result she joined another dental practice, this time a private dentist offering 'key worker' rates that they said made them cheaper than NHS.

Fast forward 18 months and my wife's front tooth (crowned 20 years ago!) is infected and needs to be removed. We have been quoted the following:

Extraction under sedation - £200
Temporary false tooth - £400
Bridge in 4-6 weeks - £1,100

I looked online and saw that most, if not all of the above work would cost £198 if performed by a NHS dentist. Clearly this is something I want to investigate.

Questions:
* Assuming I can find one with 'vancancies' would a NHS dentist accept my wife as a patient knowing she needs this work doing?

* Am I right that as a fee paying NHS patient all the work above would cost £198?

* Would the NHS agree to fix my wives front teeth with a bridge, or could they insist on a false tooth?

Thanks in advance for any advice given. If you need anymore information please let me know.

brook2jack

If your wife wants the tooth out with sedation then she will have to be referred to a clinic for this and waiting times are likely to be considerable. The referring dentist can make the denture cost £183 ish.

The difficulty is that a bridge will not be deemed clinically necessary and it is unlikely a nhs dentist would do it unless it was private.(most nhs dentists will also do some private work). If by some miracle they would do it on the nhs it would be another course of treatment £183 as this is normally done some months after extraction to allow proper healing.

Yes she may find a dentist to do the denture but as you now know if she fails any appointments or doesn't give sufficient notice she will not be seen again. Nhs dentists can no longer charge for failed appointments and cannot bear the costs involved in increasing numbers of people failing appointments.

welshdent

brook sums everything up nicely. The only thing I would say is to not rush ahead with a bridge at 4 - 6 weeks. You would want to leave it approx 6 months to account for the bone healing and thus resporption/shrinkage. Personally IMHO .... Its unlikely you would get all that for £198 unless you find an exceedingly charitable dentist. Often one with whom you have built up a relationship over a number of years. As it is you are looking at a minimum of 2 courses of treatment anyway due to there being 2 different prostheses to manage the same space

Anthony_MK

Thanks all for the advice. Due to time pressures we had to go ahead with the single tooth removal and denture late last week and after speaking with a number of NHS dentists it appears the bridge will not be covered. The bridge has been quoted at £1,200 which is £400 per tooth, as a tooth either side is included in the cost.

The one area where I am still concerned is the wait time for the bridge. The dentist who has done the work as now said 3 weeks wait is sufficient, but welshdent has advised 6 months, clearly this is a massive difference and I am keen to get further advice on this, before discussing again with the dentist who has quoted. I would also like to know if it is worthwhile asking for some sort of guarantee from this dentist in erms of how long the bridge should remain in place?!

brook2jack

I normally wait at least 3 months before a bridge prep. But none of us have seen your wife or xrays etc . So we are commenting blind.

As to guarantees ..... Most dentists will offer some sort of limited guarantee but since we have no control over what patient eats, how well they brush , how often they use superfloss around the bridge (essential), whether they use their front teeth to open beer bottles, whether they grind their teeth etc guarantees are variable and don't cover all circumstances.

The other variable is what sort of condition the teeth holding the bridge are in. They can also cause problems due to no fault of the dentists.eg a substantial (25%) amount die off a couple of years after preparing for a bridge needing root treatment.