Decision Report 201400117

Summary

Mr C complained that a dentist had failed to provide him with an acceptable level of treatment, including root canal treatment, which meant he had to have a significant amount of additional treatment.

In considering Mr C's complaint, we took independent advice from one of our advisers, who is a dentist. Although a drill had broken whilst inside Mr C's tooth during root canal treatment, our adviser said that this is a well-recognised complication of the treatment and is a fairly common occurrence. Mr C was concerned that part of the drill remained in his tooth, but there was no evidence of this in an x-ray taken after the treatment. Mr C had also been sprayed with water during the treatment, but the practice had already written to him to apologise for this. We found that it was reasonable for the dentist to try to repair a fractured filling rather than removing and replacing the whole filling, and that it was reasonable to prescribe Mr C with an antibiotic. In addition, we found that there was no requirement for the practice to offer Mr C an emergency appointment when a temporary filling fell out. Overall, we found that that the dental treatment provided to Mr C was reasonable.