Teeth problems (v. long!)

matryoshka_2

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Toothsmith

Dentists can only give an opinion on what they see before them on the day they see someone.

As a dentist sees you more and more they can see improvement/deterioraton and generally 'get used' to you.

I'll ignore the first 'scary' dentist, as that's not really relavent.

The 'new graduate' was presented with a 19yr old with a diet coke habit. I can easily believe that your teeth were crumbling, as it's evil stuff.

She seems to have done a good range of treatments with extractions, root fillings and crowns. She obviously wasn't doing the simplest treatments possible. She was NHS, and therefore was always going to be time-constrained. (This isn't an excuse though - if dentists can't do good work on the NHS, then they shouldn't be doing it, they should go private - but NHS dentistry is never going to be the same all inclusive experience that private dentistry should be). I'm not surprised she couldn't give you full explainations of all the options.

If a tooth NEEDS to come out, it's a bit late to give you all the implications of the downside of tooth-loss. What are you going to do that's different?

You had a fair bit of treatment done, but got a bit put off by her remarks and stopped going.

In the meantime, you seem to have cut down your diet Coke consumption. And probably upped the toothbrushing even more? In short - being scared about the state of your teeth has improved your behaviour. (Dentally speaking )

The dentist you saw when you went back saw a different you.

One that had had the 'rubbish' removed, one that had a lower consumption of diet Coke, and one that had a much better looking mouth.

His first impression of you would have been much better than the first young lady. He didn't mention 'crumbling teeth' because they weren't crumbling ANY MORE - not because they never were. And as he said - the essential work had been done.

Going to the cosmetic dentist is a leap to a different league.

You have done the research and found a good guy who can take his time and explain all the options. But he's still seeing you as you are now - not as you were then. He's seeing someone who's had a bit of a dental 'awakening' and is now a pretty keen and dentally aware patient.

You have become the sort of patient who it is worth spending time and money on as there is a fair chance that any advanced stuff done on you will last now.

The failing root filling could be due to it having to be done in a less than ideal way on the NHS, or it could be due to the long tme interval between the first stage and the second stage.

The NHS practice probably didn't have the facilities to handle it properly, and maybe they should have referred it to a specialist - but that would have been private and expensive. The other option would have been to take it out.

I think your first dentist is being blamed unfairly here.

It is not her who did the damage - it is, almost certainly the nice people at the Coca Cola Corporation who did that.

Your first dentist did what she thought was right on the patient who was in front of her. As have the second, and the 'cosmetic' dentist.

It's just that all three of them have seen 'different' patients.

As for legal action, with the time constraints of NHS practice, a specialist dental claims lawyer could almost certainly find errors and omissions in the treatment plans, or the notes, relating to your treatment. I'm sure they could build a case up if they really wanted to.

As for any of your dentists deserving this - no - I don't think they do.

alison999

matryoshka wrote: »

I don't know if it's worth trying to take legal action (I don't want loads of compensation, but some contribution to the costs of what I'll have to have done to replace all the missing teeth would be extremely helpful) or, if legal action is unrealistic, can I complain? And am I able to request my dental records from the practice?

Apologies for length!

why not try to take some personal responsibility here instead of just trying to blame a dentist that was doing her best to help you? you can get a COPY of your records (anyone can) but you need to bear in mind that, chances are you wont like what you read

matryoshka_2

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suki1964

I dont think alison was out of order in her reply. You Do need to take some responsibility for the state of your teeth. Ive lost more then enough teeth and Im sure a few of them could have been saved but no dentist was going to be working with me when I was non compliant - I was still smoking and drinking, basically had a rubbish idea of oral hygiene and a dire diet. Now Ive woken up to myself, no longer drink or smoke, have learned how to care for my teeth, the dentist Im seeing now has insisted on crowning a tooth I said he could pull.

As toothsmith says, you are a different patient now to the one you were then

matryoshka_2

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Toothsmith

matryoshka wrote: »

My biggest concern with the first dentist was that she seemed to want to take a LOT of teeth out and it was only me refusing (at the time mostly out of vanity!) that made her do the the crown.

She took a great risk in doing this.

If - for example - you had gone on holiday, anything up to several years later, and due to you not curbing your diet Coke consumption, this crown had flared up into an abscess, or had broken off due to decay, and you had spent time in distress, and had big bills to fix it - You would probably have a better case against this dentist than you seem to at the moment.

Providing what you consider to be inappropriate treatement could always come back to haunt you.

If I'd had a patient refuse what I considered to be the best treatment for them, then I'd probably refuse to carry on treating them.

I have been in the situation where doing something to 'help' a patient against my judgement has nearly come back to haunt me. Fortunately I had kept very good notes on the matter, and had asked the patient to sign them to the effect that I had not recommended the treatment.

Had she pushed the matter though, it would have come out in court that her signature was not worth anything, and that under NO circumstances should I have done a treatment I did not consider to be appropriate - patient's signature or not. Fortunately, she had not taken legal advice.

alison999

matryoshka wrote: »

alison999 has a right to her opinion. It's a right that people use in a particularly insidious way on MSE, which is part of the reason why I didn't use my main account. I'm really tired of people on these forums (half the time people who have been here for about a week or themselves are bankrupt/up to their neck in debt) acting like they have the right to preach to everyone else about 'personal responsibility'. They don't. They're not helpful, they're not insightful, and all they do is take threads in which people are genuinely asking for help and advice and try to wreck them.

im not trying to start anything here but just b/c you dont like my reply doesnt mean that i am preaching. i just think all too often people try to sue people just for the sake of a bit of money, im not saying that you are doing that but as toothsmith already said, she treated a "different" then that of the other dentists.