Gosport man awarded £6,000 after a years of repeated dental infection and pains following treatment at MyDentist

Stuart McGarrick, 63, has been awarded £6,000 compensation in an out of court settlement with Whitecross Care Limited, who run MyDentist in Gosport, and Dr Daniela Tranca, who initially treated Stuart at Trafalgar Rowner. The payment was due to the failure to initially diagnose and then affectively treat tooth decay over a 10 year period.

Stuart initially saw Dr Tranca in 2014 who flagged the high risk of tooth decay in one of his teeth before he moved surgeries to MyDentist where he saw a number of dentists.

Stuart said: “10 years ago I went for a routine appointment with Dr Tranca where she noted a high risk of decay in a tooth on my lower-right jaw and took some x-rays. However, she didn’t flag any major cause for concern that needed immediate attention.”

Having moved dental practices, he started to experience more pain in the tooth previously highlighted. He said: “By late-2015, my filling broke on the same tooth that Dr Tranca had earlier marked as high risk, and I was in pain and it was swelling up. I visited a dentist at MyDentist, Gosport and they diagnosed it as decay and gave me a root canal and crown.

“I found the crown really irritating but they said it’s normal and just needed to settle in. However, over the next 18 months, I was in so much pain, and kept getting infections.”

Stuart added: “This constant cycle of infections and pain was during Covid and I was already struggling to secure an appointment with the dentist to have things fixed, but it just continued to get worse.

“Food was getting lodged in between my teeth and it was really hard to bite down on the left side, so I had difficulty eating. There were also nights that I just couldn’t sleep due to the searing pain. It was at this point I decided to go private and have this sorted quickly. I just couldn’t cope much longer.”

Fortunately for Stuart, the private practice were able to identify the crown as the issue, stating it was ill-fitted. Stuart said: “It was remarkable how quick my private practitioner spotted and diagnosed the issue, not only was the crown a poor fit but it was also squeezing up against the tooth next to it, which was causing the infections. They placed a new crown really easily, but it’s likely I’ll lose the tooth within the next 10 years.”

Unhappy with the level of service he experienced, Stuart approached the Dental Law Partnership, specialist dental negligence solicitors. Analysis conducted by the solicitors found that if the issues had been properly diagnosed 10 years ago, it is likely that Stuart would not have needed the route canal and crown treatment. While if a satisfactory crown had been placed it would have saved years of pain, as well as the tooth.

Stuart said: “I am hoping to finally start moving forward with my life after this terrible experience. What I’m annoyed about is that the treating dentists at MyDentist knew the crown was a bad fit but then refused to take a proper look after.

“Instead, they constantly fobbed me off. I expected a higher standard of treatment than that, and it’s a shame I had to resort to going private to receive the level of care I deserve.”

Rebecca McVety of the Dental Law Partnership commented: “The distress and pain our client has experienced was completely unnecessary. If the dentists involved had provided more satisfactory treatment, his problems could have been avoided.”

A spokesperson for mydentist said: “We would like to apologise for the experience Mr McGarrick had when under treatment at our practice. Ensuring patients receive the highest quality dental care when being treated at our practices is our first priority and we’re disappointed that on this rare occasion it fell below our expectations.”

The case was settled out of court in August 2024 with both Dr Tranca and Whitecross Care Limited not admitting liability.