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Case ref:201101095
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Date:December 2011
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Body:A Dental Practice, Highland NHS Board
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Sector:Health
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Outcome:Upheld, recommendations
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Subject:clinical treatment; diagnosis
Summary
Mrs C's son (Mr A) was removed from his dental practice’s list of patients. When he attended a new dentist, he was told that he needed at least nine fillings. Mrs C complained that the original dentist had provided inadequate dental treatment to her son resulting in the need for several fillings.
The original dentist maintained that Mr A had poor oral health and said that he only attended for emergency appointments. The dentist said that at such appointments it would not be usual practice to undertake a full check-up, and on the day of attendance they would concentrate on the cause of pain.
We were not able to establish whether the dental decay developed before or after the initial visit to the new practice. We upheld the complaint, however, as we noted that the original practice did not follow Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) guidelines in that they did not take recommended (bitewing) x-rays or carry out a full assessment of Mr A.
Recommendation
We recommended:
• that the dentist takes into account the contents of SIGN 47 for future reference.