A 62-year-old man from Truro, Cornwall, has resorted to pulling out his own tooth with pliers after an 18-month struggle to find an NHS dentist. David Woodhouse said he had been unable to register with an NHS surgery in the county since returning from working abroad.
Mr Woodhouse said an NHS emergency treatment centre offered to extract the tooth in December 2018, but that would not address his long-term problem with a dental plate. Three weeks later, he removed the tooth himself using needle-nose pliers.
“I had a loose one and it was causing me a little bit of pain, so I got the needle-nose pliers and out it came,” he said. “I could have had the tooth extracted but what I need is a term of treatment from the dentist.”
Healthwatch Cornwall, the county's health watchdog, said access to NHS dentists was the number one issue people raised, with some waiting more than three years to register. NHS England figures show over 48,000 people are on waiting lists in Devon and Cornwall, and only one practice in Cornwall is accepting new patients.
The British Dental Association described NHS dental care as “increasingly a postcode lottery.” Mr Woodhouse now fears he may need a bank loan to go private. “I'm not looking forward to the next tooth coming loose,” he said. “I may have to consider a bank loan to go private, but why should I?”
