Doing your own dentistry

Health Minister Ben Bradshaw claims there’s no need for anyone to resort to pulling their own teeth out, while if they need urgent dentistry they can just demand treatment from their GP.

Why do we keep electing out-of-touch, cosily insulated twits like this into office?

Mr Bradshaw, along with the other members of the political class, undoubtedly has access to private dentistry thanks to his ministerial income, buoyed by a long list of parliamentary perks.

But if you’re not among the affluent and can’t afford to pay for dentistry outright or to pay into a monthly plan - plus pay extra for many treatments - then you have to fall back on the NHS, paid for from taxes and National Insurance contributions.

Unless you’re on certain categories on benefits or pregnant, NHS dentistry is not free at the point of delivery and you do have to pay towards the cost of treatment.

I don’t have a problem with that because, while we can’t afford the cost of going private, we can afford NHS dentistry costs provided we stay on top of our dental health and don’t need too many treatments in any given year.

But the reality is that NHS dental care is somewhere between difficult and impossible to access, while the quality of the dentistry - if you can get it - can be appallingly bad.

The Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health has just published a survey of NHS dentistry in England.

The survey of 5,200 patients found 20 percent had refused treatment because of the high costs, while six percent had treated themselves at some point.

I definitely fall into the latter category and, despite what the privileged and insulated Mr Bradshaw believes, it was completely necessary.

I’ve posted before about how I developed a dental abscess back in January 2006. I went to our NHS dentist - Dr Swierzbinska at Northfield Dental Centre some 30 miles away - and was told the abscess was not sufficiently serious to justify incision or a root canal treatment.

For the next year, I was prescribed antibacterials or antibiotics while the abscess grew in size.

As the dentist did not want to incise the abscess and the pressure from the infection was causing my gum to swell uncomfortably, I incised it myself using a sterile hypodermic syringe and needle, then flushed it with saline solution.

That got me through to January this year, when the dentist finally agreed that as the abscess had now spread to a second tooth I could have root canal treatment. It was also at this time that she first incised the abscess herself.

The only problem with getting the root canal treatment done was that I would have to wait until the last two weeks of April and the first in March to be treated, so I had another three months of pain to get through.

Not to mention having gums that leaked blood and pus whenever I tried to eat something.

Worse was to come.

I had the first two parts of the root canal treatment at the end of April and then went back for the final part on 4 May.

However, the dentist now said the work was beyond her skills and the surgery’s facilities, so I would have to go private.

If I couldn’t go private, she would refer me to the dental hospital but would have to wait some time for the treatment to be finished.

She then put temporary fillings in the two teeth she’d opened up, and sent me away.

Since then, I’ve had a letter from the NHS saying that almost all patients are seen by the dental hospital within six weeks of being on the waiting list.

What they don’t say, it that you have to wait to go on the waiting list. I’ve now been waiting six months to get on the six-week waiting list - with no further treatment, no further antibiotics and no further antibacterials.

I phone the hospital every few weeks and always get the same message, that the hospital is achieving its waiting list targets and I will get a letter inviting me to make an appointment in due course.

Meanwhile, I have regular headaches, I have a stiff neck, my gum is dividing in two at the point where the abscess is, I have loose teeth, I have constant low to moderate pain in my gum and face, pus and blood ooze out regularly, and my teeth are very sensitive to hot and cold.

I treat myself with painkillers (but no more than four or five times a week, mainly before going to bed), have incised the abscess again, rinse with anti-bacterial mouth washes and saline, and generally get on with life.

I know that in writing this post I will get a barrage of messages telling me to go private, but before sending me comments and emails to that effect, consider this.

A friend of the Other Half had a similar abscess to me. It cost her just over £1,200 for private dental treatment - and my abscess is now much worse than hers was when treated.

The dental business that our surgery belongs to has three grades of care: NHS, Grampian Dental Care at twice the NHS cost and full private at four times the NHS costs.

Yes, we could try and cut even more from our budget for a private dental plan, but a dental plan would not cover a pre-existing condition. (And to be quite frank, we can’t cut more from our budget - we have only one car, we don’t smoke, we rarely drink, we don’t have paid-for satellite TV, our grocery budget is £35 a week, and so on.)

The Other Half and I have both paid National Insurance contributions and taxes that are supposed to provide, in part, NHS dentistry. We are both happy to pay towards the cost of our NHS treatment.

We both eat healthily, look after our teeth and, before moving to Scotland, had been able to have our teeth checked yearly by an NHS dentist to spot and correct any issues before they developed into problems.

Now, not only do we have limited access to a service we have paid for, but when I did get treatment it was limited, late and finally left unfinished.

On top of that, how ethical is it for an NHS dentist to stop the treatment halfway through and tell the patient they have to go private if they want the job finished? Either that, or wait an indefinite period for the NHS to finish the job.

As for Mr Bradshaw’s suggestion that we go to the GP and demand treatment, well, I have been to the GP and been told “it’s a dental problem”.

Then, to add insult to injury, he tells us - and other people like us - that there’s no reason to resort to DIY dentistry.

Try telling that to the woman who posted on the BBC about having her treatment stopped halfway through so that she had to apply temporary fillings to her teeth every month for 18 months.

Or the man who pulled out five of his teeth with fishing tools because he couldn’t afford treatment.

I know whose teeth I’d like to tear out with a pair of pliers - starting with the false smiles that radiate so falsely from the Scottish and UK Parliaments.