By John Ely Mailonline Senior Health Reporter
April 24, 2024 12:31, updated April 24, 2024 12:41
Britons are pulling out their own teeth with pliers as the NHS's dental crisis continues to worsen.
Jamie Totterdell said he has had to have several DIY tooth extractions over the past 16 years because he was unable to get an appointment.
Although he could not afford private treatment, he was able to pay for the tests.
The only time Mr Totterdell managed to see an NHS dentist was through an emergency appointment after a failed DIY tooth extraction.
He told ITV's Good Morning Britain: “Once I had a tooth extracted I left the house and had to go to the dentist.” [pieces of] There are teeth in there. ”
“They had to have surgery to fix it,” Totterdell added, although his age and place of residence were not revealed on the show.
His eye-opening story was told in a section highlighting how only 1 per cent of practices currently offer NHS appointments on demand.
Eddie Crouch, chairman of the British Dental Association (BDA), said he was contacted weekly by people who were being forced to undertake DIY dental treatment amid the booking crisis.
He warned that people were potentially putting their lives at risk from complications that could arise from failed DIY extractions.
Crouch said: “People want to do it right, but obviously when you put pliers in your mouth, you can't see what you're doing and you end up breaking the tooth and leaving roots inside the tooth. It will happen,” he said. You get a really serious infection.
“Sadly, we have seen people with severe infections and on the verge of becoming sepsis. It's shocking what can happen.”
Mr Crouch also revealed that DIY dentistry goes beyond tooth extraction, with some Britons using superglue to repair broken teeth.
Some of the practices contacted by GMB had five-year waiting lists for NHS patients.
The findings were announced despite ministers pledging to solve the NHS's worsening dental booking crisis.
Desperate patients endured huge 4am queues to be seen by others, flying to war-torn Ukraine for cheap private dental care.
GMB contacted 100 dentists in 10 regions of the UK to inquire about the NHS and the availability of private appointments.
This study is a repeat of a similar study conducted by GMB in 2016.
All 10 regions then had dentists who could provide NHS appointments.
However, the most recent study found that only three regions had this capacity.
Overall, only 1% of dentists surveyed were able to offer NHS appointments, a significant drop from 13% in 2016.
However, access to private appointments has skyrocketed over the same period.
The latest survey found that 17 percent of dental practices can offer private appointments, up from 12 percent eight years ago.
A private appointment for a basic dental check-up usually costs around £75, almost three times the NHS standard rate of £26.80.
However, GMB reported that it found some clinics were charging more than £250 for urgent same-day private appointments.
Research has found that private dental provision is rapidly increasing in major London cities.
In 2016, only 40% of dentists in the metropolitan area offered private appointments, but this has increased to 70% in the latest survey.
One practice told GMB that same-day appointments for patients cost £260.
There were similar stories in other parts of England.
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In Leeds, none of the clinics contacted were able to offer NHS appointments, but half were able to offer same-day private appointments.
In Newcastle, only one in 10 dental practices can offer NHS appointments, and in Norwich, the number is zero.
One dentist in Southampton told investigators there was a 2,000-strong waiting list for NHS appointments, while another in Leeds said there was a five-year waiting list.
The findings come despite the government's recently announced £200m dental recovery plan.
It will offer dentists cash incentives of up to £50 per new NHS patient they see, as well as attract work in the UK's so-called 'dental deserts', where taxpayer-subsidized dental appointments are in short supply. We are offering a golden greeting of 20,000 pounds.
Ministers hope the incentive will lead to an additional 2.5 million appointments next year.
But the plan, announced 10 months after it was first promised, was criticized by dentists and politicians who said it did not go far enough.
The BDA said this amounted to “rearranging the deckchairs” and would not bring about the desired and much-needed change.
Official figures show 24,151 dentists took up NHS jobs in England in 2022-23, down 121 from 24,272 in the previous financial year.
The latest total is around 500 fewer dentists than were practicing for the NHS in 2019-20, the previous year before the coronavirus pandemic.
The BDA fears the number could fall further to below 24,000, a figure not recorded since 2014-15.
Adult and pediatric attendance numbers at NHS dentists have fallen off a cliff during the coronavirus pandemic as clinics closed and treatment provision halted as part of lockdown rules.
But even though the darkest days of the pandemic are long gone, the economy has not recovered.
Industry experts suggest this is because providing NHS treatment is not as lucrative as privatization.
Old NHS contracts for dentists meant that they were paid for a set of tasks performed, rather than an individual treatment, no matter how complex a particular case.
In practice, this meant that NHS dentists received the same remuneration for treating a patient who needed 10 fillings as they would for treating a patient who needed just one.
As a result, dentists were left with a loss because the treatment fees for some NHS patients did not cover the cost of treatment.
Although this contact is currently being reformed, the BDA estimates that thousands of NHS dentists have abandoned or significantly reduced their NHS work following the pandemic.
Compounding the crisis is that as more dentists abandon or significantly reduce their NHS work, those remaining at risk will be overwhelmed.
A post-pandemic 2022 BDA survey of dentists suggests that three-quarters are experiencing burnout as they feel unable to spend enough time with patients to provide the care they need.
And, similar to the GP booking crisis, frustration can boil over as patients struggle to gain access.
The same BDA survey found that 86% of dentists said they had experienced physical or verbal abuse from a patient in their practice.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson told GMB that the government's dental recovery plan means “more practices across England are already taking on new adult patients”.
The latest statistics from June last year showed that around 26 million adults (about 60% of the population) had not had a health check in the past two years.
This is one of the lowest percentages since recent records began in 2006.