A woman told by a dodgy dental surgery to recover a loose crown from her POO after swallowing it has been awarded £20,000 compensation.
Sally Bannister, 44, spent nine years being treated by Dr Matthew Jackson but said she was left in agony after a series of ‘patch-up jobs’.
Her problems came to a head when she swallowed an ‘onlay’ – a partial crown – which came loose and asked the practice for advice.
Stunned Sally, an executive HR director, was told by a receptionist to wait until it had passed through her – and then bring it back so a replacement could be made.
She switched dentists and was horrified to be told she had long-standing tooth decay which had set in a decade earlier when she first visited Dr Jackson.
She took her case to the Dental Law Partnership and Dr Jackson has now paid her £20,000 in an out of court settlement without admitting liability.
Sally said: “It was absolutely ridiculous. The problems were never ending, and I’d been in agony on and off for at least a year.
“Dr Jackson’s treatment never seemed to make a difference and I felt he was just fobbing me off.
“It was as though he was providing quick patch-up repair jobs that never lasted.
“One time I had to demand he took an X-ray to try and get to the bottom of what was wrong.
“In addition to the pain, the sheer amount of time I was spending at the dentist meant I was missing work and had to do overtime to make up for it.”
Sally, from Witney, Oxon, was a patient at The Tower Dental practice, Carterton, Oxon, for nearly ten years.
But she says despite her regular appointments the surgery never got to the source of the problems.
She was forced to take time off work to keep up with her constant visits to the dentist and the stress took a toll on her family.
She eventually had one tooth removed in a bid to cure the problem – and still faces having another taken out.
Things came to a head six years ago when a filling fractured.
Sally said: “Dr Jackson replaced it, but it fractured again later that year. I returned to see him and this time he fitted an onlay.
“I thought it was rather strange, and didn’t understand why I kept having problems with the same tooth.”
The onlay – a partial crown fitted over the centre of a tooth – came loose and Sally swallowed it.
When she asked how a replacement would be made, a receptionist told Sally she would need to retrieve it from her own poo.
Despite the problems she continued going to the same practice when another tooth became painful the following year.
By 2013, another tooth had fractured and Sally had a filling fitted, but it fell out.
Dr Jackson repaired the filling but Sally was still struggling with pain in her tooth.
She added: “It started to put a strain on my family life too as I had to fit childcare around all the endless dental appointments.
”My husband started to become upset. It was so stressful I became distraught.”
Desperate to find a solution, Sally visited a new dentist in 2013, nine years after she first went to see Dr Jackson.
She was horrified to be told that he had fitted a filling over a decaying tooth, but not treated the decay itself.
Analysis of her dental records showed the decay had been present since 2005 – a year after she enrolled at Dr Jackson’s practice.
He had left it too late to provide root canal treatment and fitted an inadequate onlay.
She said: “It was so upsetting to find this was all because Dr Jackson hadn’t done his job properly.
“Even when I started having more problems I’d trusted him as a professional, but he just fobbed me off with total disregard for the upheaval it was having on my life.
“Eventually I realised it was probably because of the dental payment plan I was on.
“I paid a fixed amount a month for dental care, so because he couldn’t make extra money out of me he provided the minimum level of treatment.
”He never bothered to spend time finding out what was wrong. It’s awful really.”
Associate solicitor Heather Owen of the Dental Law Partnership said: “What our client went through is completely unnecessary.
“If the dentist had provided adequate treatment in the first place the stress she experienced could have been avoided.
“The compensation she receives will pay for the additional treatment required and will compensate her for the pain and suffering she endured.”
