To sue the orthodontist?

@littlemissprosseco thank you, fingers crossed. I’m hoping it’s not as bad as it sounded last week. Bearing in mind my son has a metabolic bone condition, areas of bone loss in jaw, spontaneous dental abscess (from age 2-7, none recent) do you think they’ll want to wait? Dentist seemed to want to arrange surgery ASAP and would decide depending on CT.

@LIZS also turns out orthodontist hasn’t actually done the referral they said they would in March so he’s not even been referred for NHS yet.

DS is 13 now. I feel the need to go private now as private orthodontist is saying this is going to impact his upper incisors if we wait any longer. She’s looking at doing the surgery in weeks not months. I wish I had opted for it before but the local orthodontist said it wasn’t that bad. I believed them when they said it might improve if we wait a year. Also, in the meantime, he’s had a diagnosis of a metabolic bone condition which affects teeth and bones so with this underlying condition it’s an even worse prognosis for possibly losing front adult teeth.

@bugalugs45 yes, that’s why I didn’t question it when they said wait a year as others had been told the same. But the X-ray from 2024 already shows the canine heading sideways. According to everyone it’s now too late to wait for NHS treatment as it’s only going to do more damage.

Which tbh is my experience of NHS last few years, we just paid for private knee surgeries as NHS waited too long to refer and he was at risk of losing his mobility/never doing sports again, can’t afford private surgery again plus braces without borrowing money now.

@littlemissprosseco thats good to know, thank you, I’m really worried about his upper front incisors being affected. The dentist I think wanted the orthodontist to refer to specialist/hospital for extraction. They wouldn’t do it themselves when they saw the X-ray. It does also have a retained root which I think meant they wanted a specialist to do it.

I’m not convinced it would have made a difference to the path of the canine (would have helped incisor which is through the front of the gum). I just can’t see the logic of waiting so long when waiting lists are long anyway.

@bugalugs45 I would have paid 18m ago if they’d said it could impact his upper front teeth. They said he will need braces but to wait in case it improved over 12m growing. Then this year it’s suddenly an emergency but they haven’t done a referral 4m later despite saying they would. It’s just been a massive waste of time.

This is 2024 x-ray from front of mouth, 18months ago, can already see (upper left) canine moving sideways. They didn’t do a roof of mouth x-ray but decided to leave it 12 months. Anyone else have similar X-rays at this point told to wait? Baby canine unusual in that it has a retained root (which is still retained now).

@Hecatoncheires I think our dentist were waiting for the orthodontist to refer the baby tooth to the specialist / hospital for extraction. It has a retained root so it’s very long and dentist didn’t want to remove himself. They were then happy to wait for orthodontist although at every check up they did ask if we’d heard anything. We never had any correspondence and neither did the dentist which I think delayed things.

I had a photo of the X-ray from 2024 which I showed her. The baby canine tooth has a retained root which is why my dentist was saying it was urgent, but who knows. The orthodontist did include this in the notes they wrote Feb 2024 but no sense of urgency.

Unfortunately, his X-ray last week it looks like the canine is already past the root of the first incisor but waiting for CT results as obviously not a 3D image. I’ve added image, what do u think? I wish I’d taken him private 18months ago.

Sorry above message with photo as a reply.

Your comment is very balanced. I think probably we would have had to go private but I wish they had flagged it up in Feb 24 as I would have taken him to see someone privately then. By saying it might improve if we wait a year, we waited a year. Which delayed the treatment to the point it’s now impacting his upper front teeth, which is where he’s now worse off. It wasn’t impacting his upper front teeth before (early 2024). Surgery should have been arranged straight away to give enough time for waiting list etc. and if not we would have gone private. No one ever said his upper front teeth were being impacted until we saw the private dentist last week. Will know more when we see the CT results tomorrow. I’ve attached his xray of roof of mouth. You can see it looks like the root of one incisor has already been impacted but hopefully not.

She was very angry at his appointment last week, I’ll ask her what she thinks when we’re back there tomorrow. I doubt she would either.

Yes, saw normal dentist for routine check-ups, they also seemed to be happy to wait for the orthodontist to give the go ahead to do something. The orthodontist hasn’t sent the report from March even now to dentist although I mentioned at last appointment he’d been referred for surgery, they’re still chasing it up.

Unfortunately, it was already too late to wait for NHS even if they’d done the referral in March. According to dentist and new dentist (the private dental surgeon) they won’t be able to do it on NHS before he loses some of his adult teeth as waiting lists are too long even for urgent cases. He needs the surgery in weeks not months. Should have been referred in Feb 2024 as urgent.

The new dentist is a surgeon who trained at Eastman, with 35yrs experience in NHS and private, she’s extremely good, so I do take her opinion very seriously. She was very angry about my DS’s situation. But yes the orthodontist have a severe problem with communication, my local dentist are very good, they have chased the orthodontist relentlessly for reports which have never been sent. My own dentist have copied me into everything but for some reason seemed happy to wait a year as well.