Student awarded £22,000 after botched My Dentistry work

A student has been awarded £22,000 after dentists incorrectly removed two of her teeth while leaving decay in her mouth untreated.

Alisha Khan, 20, who was 15 at the time, was a patient at My Dentist in Blackburn in 2015 and had always wanted straight teeth.

She received an out of court settlement and while the dentists did not admit liability, they have apologised.

The dentists are self-employed and not currently working for the practice.

In early 2015, just before her 12th birthday, Ms Khan said she was referred for orthodontic treatment.

By August 2018, a plan was put in place with the orthodontist, which required the extraction of several teeth.

The first appointment with the second dentist took place on 19 November 2018.

Ms Khan then started experiencing pain in another tooth - the lower left second molar - which came from a failure to treat decay.

This led to an unplanned extraction of another tooth."I was in a lot of pain," Ms Khan said.

"Some nights I would wake up in the middle of night; I'd have school but my teeth had been hurting all night."

After the second extraction appointment with the second dentist on 3 December 2018, it was revealed two of the wrong teeth had been removed - the upper right and upper left first premolars, rather than the upper right and upper left second premolars.

The law and criminology student, who lives in Manchester, explained she subsequently had to wear braces for four years, rather than one year, as a result of the incorrect extractions.

This "knocked [her] confidence" significantly and left her "worrying all the time".

"It was just horrible because I was only meant to have them on for one year and then they just became my life," she said.

Ms Khan contacted the Dental Law Partnership in 2021 who said that, had the correct teeth been extracted and the decay diagnosed and treated earlier, her orthodontic work could have been completed within 18 to 24 months and no unnecessary teeth would have been lost.

A spokesman for My Dentist said: "We would like to apologise for the experience Alisha has had.

"Providing the highest quality dental care to our patients is our first priority and we're disappointed that on this rare occasion it fell below our expectations."