Dentist pays boy £9,000 after he has to have ALL his top teeth out
A BOY of five who had to have 13 milk teeth removed after suffering severe toothache is to receive a £9,000 payout from his dentist. Cameron Jackson had the decayed teeth – including his entire top row – taken out when he was three, leaving him only seven teeth until his adult set grows.
His mother took legal action against his dentist, who failed to spot the decay after Cameron’s toothache grew worse.
They have now reached an out-of-court settlement and Cameron will receive the money when he is 18.
Dr Raymond Matloa, the dentist at the Fountain Street Medical Practice in Morley, Leeds, has not admitted liability for the loss of the boy’s teeth. It is not known why Cameron’s teeth deteriorated, but his mother, Wendy Jackson, insists he was not eating any sweets.
‘I first realised something was wrong when Cameron was unable to eat solid food at about 18 months,’ she said. ‘He didn’t eat solid food at all and wouldn’t even touch sweets. He just drank milk.’
Mrs Jackson, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, said she grew increasingly concerned. ‘His dentist kept saying his teeth were fine but even I could see they were yellow, not white like milk teeth should be,’ she said.
‘The dentist advised us to brush them more but when we did his teeth literally crumbled and ended up looking like little pegs. Cameron would scream and his gums would bleed like crazy. He woke up every night crying.’
Mrs Jackson, 31, whose two other children, aged ten and two, have normal teeth with no fillings, gave Cameron pain relief every evening.
‘The dentist said he was eating too many sweets, which I knew wasn’t right because Cameron never touched any solid food, never mind sweets,’ she said.
She took Cameron to her GP but was told he was fine, she said. In December 2010, Dr Matloa referred him to Leeds General Infirmary.
‘At first they said I must have taken something when I was pregnant to cause the decay,’ said Mrs Jackson, who told the doctors she had not been on any prescription drugs.
Cameron’s teeth were removed at a dental institute in Leeds in 2010.
Mrs Jackson said he was now very self-conscious.
She said: ‘He doesn’t like smiling because he’s scared that somebody’s going to say, “Why have you got no teeth?”
‘The payout doesn’t give me the answers I want and doesn’t change what’s happened, but it’s good that Cameron can have that money when he’s older,’ she said.
The family’s lawyer, Heather Williams, of the Dental Law Partnership, said coping with fewer teeth until his adult teeth grew was ‘something that no one would like to go through, especially at his age’.
Dr Matloa declined to comment.