My shock at waking to see dentist pulled out the wrong tooth
A MAN woke up from a routine dental operation – to find the surgeon had taken out the wrong tooth.
Peter Clark, 61, had general anaesthetic for the procedure to allow dentists to remove two of his teeth and an associated cyst.
But when he came round, he was told that on realising his mistake, the surgeon put the tooth back in – before carrying out the correct operation.
He later had to have the tooth that was wrongly taken out removed after undergoing root canal surgery and suffering from bone loss.
Peter said: “I was in a complete state of shock. They had extracted a tooth on the other side of my mouth, which made it more unbelievable.
“You hear stories about surgery going wrong, but never think it’s going to happen to you. But because they re-implanted it, I assumed everything would be fine.”
Peter, a cabinet maker, had the procedure on the NHS at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex, in February 2015.
The following year, Peter’s local dentist informed him that he would soon lose the tooth.
He said: “I realise that I was ignorant to think that everything was fine when they re-implanted the tooth. Although I wasn’t in any pain, the tooth was still loose and I was going to have to pay money for a root canal treatment I didn’t need in the first place.
“I had already lost two teeth so to lose another one completely unnecessarily because of a mistake made by a medical professional was outrageous.
“What I was never prepared for was a surgeon removing another tooth that was perfectly healthy.
“If I had been conscious at the time and able to inform the surgeon, such a ridiculous error never would have happened.”
Peter, from Chelmsford, has been awarded £5,811 in an out-ofcourt settlement.