Dental advice wanted – denied root canal treatment
"I have a tooth with a 5-year-old root canal which is failing (infection underneath). My NHS dentist thinks I should have it redone but he doesn’t provide the service. He forwarded me to the region’s waiting list for treatment… after 4 months wait my dentist got back a letter from the PCT telling him that I did meet all the criteria to join their waiting list but that they are "full to capacity" so can’t even add me to their waiting list. Apparently I am welcome to try again in the next financial year when they might start adding people to their waiting lists again.
How can I be denied access to NHS treatment which my dentist and the authorities agree I need because they claim "the whole region is full to capacity"?
Thanks."
This is outrageous. Of course root canal treatment is available on the NHS however many dentists will tell you that it isn’t. It is the fault of how the dentist is paid. He is paid the same amount of money to extract a tooth (takes seconds) as he is to perform root canal treatment (can take a couple of hours). It is ridiculous.
Write to the dentist and complain – do not do this verbally, do it in writing
Write to the PCT
Write to your MP
Keep all correspondence
You have an infection, you are presumably in pain (or if not immediately you might well be soon), you are possibly having to take antibiotics. This is not good enough
I’m a portuguese dentist and I find it outrageous too. As the admin stated the problem is dentists get payed the same amount no matter if they extract a tooth or perform root canal treatment. You can’t just blame the dentist, but you should blame the whole system: it is bad both for the patient and the dentist…
A repeat root canal treatment is a complex and time consuming treatment. Usually this treatment is performed by dentists who have more advanced training and experience with this type of work. Also the success rate is almost always lower than doing the root canal the first time especially if not in the right hands.
Please bear in mind that (unfortunately) the NHS is effectively a rationed health care system and budgets are being slashed. People are being denied life saving and life prolonging drugs and treatment in the name of cost cutting and rationing.
The alternative to root canal treatment or re-root canal treatment is extraction. Root canal treament is ‘ideal’ but not ‘necessary’ to have a healthy mouth.
Unfortunately yes it is a rationed system so cannot please everybody. If it makes you feel any better, once a root treatment has failed the chances it will be successful after a retreatment are much less especially if there is evidence of infection around the root on the xray. You may have to accept that the tooth may have to come out.
Another option is to commute to a dental school. I am not sure where you are based but for example Leeds Dental School are always looking for patients, treatment is completely free and the standard of care is very good as dental schools use all of the newest materials and equipment and there is a qualified experienced dentist that will check the students’ work every 20 minutes or so. You will also get any other work that needs doing done all for free. More people should be made aware of Dental Schools as an option.
Hope any of that helps
I am a dentist that has worked in both private and NHS practice.
It might be ‘outrageous’ for this treatment to be denied if the NHS was rolling in money and if there were plenty of root canal specialists around to do the job and be paid appropriately for the time and effort it involves (a specialist might easily take two or three hours if it were a large molar).
However as another user has posted, doing a root canal for the FIRST time is a very technically demanding procedure, plus there are many factors that can cause it to fail, even if it is done well. To do the root canal a SECOND time is even more demanding; for some reason the first one hasn’t worked, maybe a blocked canal or a crack in the root, or no crown placed, so the second time is even less likely to work. Consequently it is ideally done by a specialist (which often involves three years or more extra training); a general dentist could ‘have a go’; it might work, but in many cases it won’t. In many cases it won’t work even in the hands of a specialist. and then the tooth will need extracting anyway.
There are more and more people living longer and keeping more of their teeth – where in the past they would have had dentures. So there are many, many more old root fillings in teeth that are failing – nothing lasts forever. There is no way that the NHS, with its ever dwindling resources, can or should be expected to fund this. It is throwing good money away that would be much better spent on cancer drugs or nurses salaries. You can survive without a tooth! I sympathise with the OP if they are suffering from toothache, but unless they are willing to pay for a specialist or another dentist with particular skill, I feel it is wrong to expect the NHS to pay for this.
I agree with a lot of what you say. However patients do not understand any of this. All they understand is that something is broken and they want it fixed. It is the Government, the NHS and perhaps the dentists who need to educate patients more.
And perhaps we need to look at the real problem. Why are dentists paid so little money to do such specialist work?
Maybe the dentist didn’t want to perform the retreatment because he feels that he is incapable of doing it. Don’t try aything beyond your skill level and refer that’s what I’ve always been told by my defence union