PRITCHARD: DENTIST ERROR LEFT WOMAN WITH ROTTEN TOOTH IN PAIN FOR YEARS
A dentist told a woman with a rotten tooth her severe pain was ‘all in her mind’ and twice drilled into her teeth without anaesthetising her mouth properly, a hearing was told.
Andrew Pritchard failed to correctly diagnose which tooth was causing the woman excruciating pain over a period of more than two years, the General Dental Council heard.
Pritchard claimed she was imagining the problems and ‘needed to move on’ during repeated visits to his Gloucestershire surgery, the hearing was told.
When she complained after he failed to numb her mouth during treatment, he allegedly said she had an ‘abnormal nerve’ and could not be anaesthetised.
The woman, identified only as patient A, registered with Mr Pritchard’s dental practice in St John’s Avenue, Churchdown, Gloucestershire, in 2000.
Tom Cosgrove, for the GDC, said: ‘She was by her own admission a nervous patient, but as you will hear, she trusted Mr Pritchard and saw him fairly regularly, every few months.’
She complained of severe pain in the right side of her mouth as early as May 2006, but the dentist ‘failed to adequately diagnose’ which tooth was causing the problem, said Mr Cosgrove.
He carried out an agonisingly painful root canal re-treatment, when in fact the problems were being caused by the tooth next to it, the hearing was told.
‘The re-treatment…was inevitably not going to treat the cause of the pain being suffered by patient A,’ said Mr Cosgrove.
‘Had the correct diagnosis been made it is likely patient A would have been spared the pain she was to suffer in the following months and indeed years.’
Pritchard carried out a re-treatment of the wrong tooth in May 2006, which the woman found ‘extremely painful’ and asked why she could not be anaesthetised, the hearing was told.
‘He explained that he had injected her gums as much as he could but there was something wrong with her nerve pathways so that the area could not be anaesthetised,’ said Mr Cosgrove.
Pritchard, who failed to record the type of amount of painkiller he had used, could have correctly numbed the woman’s mouth but failed to do, the hearing was told.
The treatment failed and she called Pritchard as an emergency in waking up in ‘excruciating pain’ in August.
He diagnosed antibiotics after speaking to her on the phone, and claiming she ‘could not’ be suffering pain in the upper right part of her mouth, as he had already removed a nerve.
Patient A continued to return to the dentist and despite carrying out another painful and inadequately anaesthetised procedure in September 2006, he did not deal with the source of the pain.
‘She continued to see Mr Pritchard every six months, but she remained in pain,’ said Mr Cosgrove.
‘She had to regularly take a lot of painkillers to deal with the pain she was experiencing.
‘She says when she told Mr Pritchard of this pain, that she was told by him she was imagining it, and she needed to move on.’
It was only after she booked an appointment with another dentist In August 2009 that she learned that it was the tooth next to the one that Pritchard had been treating that was causing problems.
Pritchard denies failing to adequately diagnose or treat the source of the pain.
He does not accept that he indicated that patient A’s pain was ‘all in her mind’ on a number of occasions between September 2006 and December 2008.
The dentist further denies causing the woman ‘pain and distress’ by failing to provide effecting local anaesthetised during two treatments in May and September 2006.
Pritchard, who is representing himself, admitted that he did not record which tooth was responding painfully in May 2006, and that his records were poor.
The dentist accepts that he told patient A that her pain could not be in her upper right mouth as he had removed a nerve during a phone call, but does not accept that he inappropriately prescribed antibiotics without having arrived at a proper diagnosis.
He also admits practising without dental insurance.
The hearing continues.
ends
