Mr Nicolas Lowe, a 36-year-old secondary school graphic design teacher from Hackney, London, has been awarded £6,500 by two former dentists with the help of specialist dental negligence solicitors the Dental Law Partnership. The payment was awarded after poor filling treatment and undiagnosed decay in two teeth resulted in the two teeth needing root canal treatment and crown placement. One of Mr Lowe’s teeth is still so sensitive he’s struggled to eat or drink anything cold for years, even cold water.
Mr Lowe was a patient at Highgate Dental Centre in Highgate, where he was first treated by Dr Punit Shah in 2018. “After I went in for a routine checkup, Dr Shah gave me fillings in two of my teeth,” Mr Lowe recalled. Nearly two years later in February 2020, he had a routine checkup with another dentist at the practice, Dr Manita Sharma.
“Dr Sharma took some x-rays of my teeth and said nothing abnormal was detected, but months later, I experienced throbbing pain in my teeth and had to leave work to go to the dentist again,” Mr Lowe explained. “I went back to Dr Shah who found that the fillings he’d done had both failed and cracked. He took an x-ray which showed extensive decay because food had been trapped under the filling and had decayed deep in the tooth over the years, but Dr Sharma hadn’t spotted it on the x-rays months before.”
“Dr Shah then removed both fillings and took out the decay, before refilling them. But I was still in agony a month later, so I went back, and the decay had started again under the fillings. He said they needed to do a root canal on one of the teeth, or extract it,” Mr Lowe recalled. “I was angry, sad and in pain, and I didn’t want to go back there ever again so I went to a different dental practice who conducted my root canal treatment and advised that the other tooth also needed one. But I’m trying to avoid it for as long as possible to prolong the nerves being removed, as it will mean I have another dead tooth.”
Frustrated with the experiences he had gone through, Mr Lowe contacted the Dental Law Partnership in 2021. Further analysis revealed the extent of the poor dental treatment Mr Lowe received from Dr Shah and Dr Sharma. Had satisfactory fillings been initially provided by Dr Shah, these teeth would have been successfully restored and would have had a good prognosis. Had Dr Sharma appropriately identified and treated the decay, where the x-ray showed clear evidence of it, only a simple filling restoration would have been required, and extensive remedial treatment would have been avoided. The poor treatment has resulted in a root canal and future loss of one of the teeth which otherwise would have been retained for the rest of his life, as well as the other tooth needing root canal treatment in future. He now faces a lifetime of replacement cycles and maintenance on those teeth.
“The tooth that’s had a root canal will need a lot of work in the future to ensure it lasts as long as it can before I lose it, and the other one is very sensitive, so I haven’t been able to eat anything cold, like ice cream, for years. Even cold water hurts,” Mr Lowe explained. “The treatment I was given was awful, and I’ve lost all confidence in NHS dentists. It shouldn’t be the case where you don’t trust NHS dentists and feel like you’ll get better treatment by going private, but that’s how it is now.”
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.”
The Dental Law Partnership took on Mr Lowe’s case in 2021. The case was successfully settled in January 2024 when Mr Lowe was paid £6,500 in an out of court settlement. The dentists involved did not admit liability.
