UK NHS: Could I sue my dentist ?

Hi all,





this all began in November 2007 when I got a dull pain in my tooth/gum... I went to the dentist the soonest day that I could and therefore got an appointment with any dentist that was free...





I was given a x-ray then told that I would probably need a root canal and they could not see any infection or abcess...





The dentist then went on to give me a local anaesthetic and drill away at my tooth... just as she got to the root I got a extremely painful sensation right up my tooth and she said "It's probably my imagination" (yeaaaaa) she then took the file thing and stuck it up my gum and I got a worse pain ! she then stopped at that point and put sme antibiotic thing up the root and covered it with a temp filling... and scheduled an appointment for another day when she said if there is any infection it will clear up*





That day came early december (two weeks after the first appointment) and I went back she numbed my mouth and then proceeded drilling same exact pain %26gt; cont

UK NHS: Could I sue my dentist ?
I dont see why you would want to sue your dentist. Has he/she actually done anything wrong?





From what you have written, it seems to me that there was a lot of deep decay inside your tooth which went deep enough to start attacking the nerve inside the tooth - irreversible pulpitis. Often when a tooth has a severely inflamed/angry nerve inside it can be near impossible to properly anaesthetise the tooth. In these instances, it is best to expose the nerve as much as possible (which is painful!) to release the pressure of blood within the tooth which is crushing the nerve. I place a steroid/antibiotic dressing on the nerve/pulp to calm the inflammation down and kill off the nerve tissue which will ultimately cease any symptoms. However, if this dead nerve is not taken out it too starts to rot away inside the tooth and will lead to infection/irritation around the roots of the tooth - ie the start of an abscess.





You mention that you are an extremely nervous patient and I imagine you fidget and squirm about in the chair and make it plainly obvious to the dentist that you dont want to be there receiving treatment. Root treatments are an extremely fiddly and complex treatment which requires a lot of concentration by the dentist. If your co-operation is not good, then the dentist has every right to refuse you treatment and refer you to someone else. It looks to me like your dentist has treated you appropriately and has made themselves available to you on 4 seperate occassions!





Im absolutely certain that if you co-operation was good enough that there is no reason why you cant proceed with the root treatment or even have the tooth extracted. However, the fact that your dentist is no longer willing to see you makes me wonder if you are a difficult unco-operative patient.
Reply:the bible says we should not sue! we should forgive and forget. God puts trials like that in our life so that one day we will learn from them and God is also doing that so you can grow in him and look to him more for your problems

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