£5,750 awarded for substandard root canal treatment

Rebecca Callard acted for a 49 year old woman, who received £5,750 following a delay in diagnosing the presence of a fractured instrument that was in her LR6 tooth, following a root canal treatment.

Our client had root canal treatment in 1994, which was carried out by a different dentist and during this procedure an instrument snapped off in the LR6. Our client first attended the Defendant dentist in 2004. The Defendant failed to identify from the X-rays that the fractured instrument was present and therefore failed to treat it.

Our client attended the Defendant on numerous occasions with pain in her lower right quadrant. The Defendant mistakenly identified the source of this pain as the LR5, whereas our client actually had a cyst on her LR6. The Defendant carried out an unnecessary root canal treatment on the LR5 and a subsequent extraction when the root filling failed.

Once our client continued to be in pain, after the LR5 was extracted in 2011, the Defendant finally identified the fractured instrument in the LR6 and referred our client for treatment. Our client subsequently lost her LR6.