Thursday 16 June 2022 09:07 AM With 90% of English dentists now closed to NHS patients, more are turning to ... trends now
Natasha Waterfield had been suffering terrible tooth pain for 18 months. Unable to speak, eat or sleep, she woke up one morning and thought: ‘I can’t cope with this. It needs to come out.’
Adopting a course of action most people would think extreme — she was at the end of her tether — the pensioner took a pair of pliers from her garden shed.
‘I stood in my front room, put the pliers around the tooth and tried to take it out. It took three hours, bit by bit. I was crying so much,’ she says.
This kind of DIY dentistry belongs in the medieval era, along with remedies such as tying the offending tooth to a string attached to a doorknob and slamming the door shut. But such is the shortage of dentists, people are resorting to these methods in Britain today.
Sadly, Ms Waterfield’s agonising solution to her dental pain is not an isolated case. Domestic dentistry is increasingly common as patients struggling to gain access to NHS dentists — and unable to afford private ones — are forced to find alternatives.
A flood of dentists going into private care, as well as an ever-increasing amount of red tape, have caused ‘a deepening crisis in dental care . . . creating a two-tier dental system’ says the patient body Healthwatch.
Increasing numbers of people are pulling out there own teeth by themselves as they are unable to find a dentist (stock photo)
There is a backlog of 40 million dental appointments, according to the British Dental Association (BDA), with some people waiting up to three years for treatment.
Almost 90 per cent of dentists in England are closed to new NHS patients wanting check-ups, reveals an analysis by The Times last month.
More than half of all council areas in England have no NHS dentists taking on new adult patients, and just under a third are not accepting children.
The number of NHS dentists in England has fallen to its lowest level for a decade. In the past two years alone, about 3,000 dentists have abandoned NHS work — 2,000 last year, on top of 951 in 2020.
This means there are just 21,544 dentists carrying out NHS work in England — fewer than in 2020, when there were 23,733.
While the comfortably off grudgingly pay for private dentists, millions on lower incomes cannot afford hundreds of pounds for fillings, extractions and root canal work, let alone the thousands some dentists demand for dentures and crowns.
Exclusive data shared with the Mail this week by the Association of Dental Groups (ADG) reveals that because of the rising cost of living, one Briton in five can’t afford a private check-up.
With no access to NHS dentists (who charge capped fees), people are left to choose between living in pain, taking on debt or — in some cases and ill-advisedly — opening up the toolbox.
The ADG recently published a list of 20 ‘dental deserts’ in England, where Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG) are ‘below the average’ in number and there is ‘a downward trend in the number of NHS dentists’.
Retired carer Ms Waterfield, who pulled out her tooth with pliers, lives in Lincolnshire — the worst county in England for NHS dental care.
In North Lincolnshire, just 32 dentists undertake NHS work for every 100,000 people. Over a two-year period, only a third of adults and 35 per cent of children here were able to see a dentist.
Patients are often unable to find a dentist via the NHS but then can't afford private treatment (stock photo)
Other ‘dental deserts’ to have emerged include Staffordshire, North-East Somerset, Thurrock, Norfolk and Northamptonshire.
Ms Waterfield, who lives in Horncastle, was told the bill to remove her tooth would be £490.
‘I couldn’t even afford £20 at that time because all my money goes on bills,’ she says. ‘I was panicking. I couldn’t go back because I couldn’t afford the treatment.’
She spent weeks ‘ringing hundreds of dentists in Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield to get someone to help me. No one could’.
Elsewhere in Lincolnshire, Richard Pick, a hedge-cutter, says he has performed his own dental procedure by ‘sterilising pliers and pulling the painful tooth out. It hurts at the time but in the long term it’s worthwhile.’
Scunthorpe resident Kerry Brown said her father had also had to resort to DIY dentistry because he couldn’t find a dentist. ‘[He] took a swig of whisky, went in his garage and pulled his tooth out,’ she says.
Another woman described not having been able to access a dentist since moving to Boston, Lincolnshire, 18 months ago, while suffering chronic toothache. ‘I’ve honestly contemplated getting my partner or his friend to take it out for me because the pain is so severe,’ she said.
Others in Lincolnshire tell of ‘nine-year waiting lists’ and ‘242-mile round trips’ because ‘it’s still cheaper than going private’.
It can be cheaper for people in the UK to fly abroad to dental treatment
Many people here have tried to register as NHS patients and been refused — but were accepted at the same clinics when they registered as private patients.
Several Lincolnshire practices have had vacancies for dentists for over a year.
Hana Rafajova, 42, who lives in Boston, has found it cheaper to return to the Czech Republic, her home country, for dental work rather than pay privately in the UK. ‘I had my
