Dental costs are so high

I agree your dentist sounds very expensive I have a private dentist I had a crown and root canal admittedly a couple of years ago and the whole bill was around £300
Where is the offending tooth ?

I feel for you! Dental pain is dreadful!! Has your dentist given you a reason for not being able to do the root canal work? I could say find another NHS dentist but I know that is not easy! If the worst comes to the worst an extraction may be the best solution, especially if the tooth is a back one. Good luck , keep us posted.
Hope the pain subsides and you have a reasonable night.

Poor you! I had dreadful toothache last week and paid my NHS dentist £70.70 I think that covered examination, antibiotics, large filling and an emergency appt. My son had a tooth taken out privately last year and that cost £300.

It is shocking. Our NHS dentist decided to go private so all 5 of us had to find somewhere else. Our county is one of the worst in the country for lack of dentists and we went nearly a year and by a stroke of luck had a tip off that a surgery had taken on a second dentist from Bulgaria. We rang and immediately got in and word spread and in a few hours all places had gone!

I would try again to find an NHS dentist or see if the dentist will allow you to pay in instalments. good luck.

My Dental Practice went private last month, but I have decided to stay with them. I have a fear of Dentists and this lady is the only one who calms me down and makes me feel at ease. I had a checkup and clean and paid only £60. I don’t have the best teeth and daresay will need costly treatments as time passes. I’ll cross that ‘bridge’ when I come to it. (no pun intended)

It sounds like you might need antibiotics for the pain. Do you have a Dental Hospital anywhere near you that you could go to for the root canal.. if you can't afford the treatment for that it might be best to go for an extraction..

That seems to be the price for crowns and root canal work sorry to say Lilcatmomma at least that's what we pay in France. Dentists are becoming hard to find here as well.

No nhs dentists where we live. I pay s denplan insurance at £30 a month ive always had awful teeth and have required lots of treatment. That covers seeing hygienist every 3months plus seeing our dentist twice a year for check ups including any treatment xrays etc. I had a bridge done last year and only had to pay laboratory fee. Ive also had extractions over last few years. I had an emergency last week bottom front tooth just broke and I had an appointment the same afternoon I rang up. I feel so sorry for folk who are denied treatment and really have to suffer dental pain it must be agony.

I’m so lucky that my dentist is no longer taking on NHS patients but is still going to continue to provide a NHS-service for current patients. I was really expecting them to tell me that I was going to have to go private because they’ve refurbished the place and put a chandelier in the waiting room. I can’t get my head around the fact that this country isn’t providing NHS dental treatment for people and everyone just accepts it.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12366057/The-battle-NHS-dentist-100-people-queue-overnight-27-000-calls-jammed-phone-lines-compete-just-60-NHS-places-Kent-dental-surgery.html#comments

I recently paid privately for a root canal. I knew it was going to be a difficult tooth so I wanted to give it the best chance. My poor dentist needed two appointments to do it and still wasn't certain that she had been completely successful. She said she could refer me to a specialist who would have more advanced equipment but warned me I would be looking at £1,000+. I said we'd see how her work turned out. She crowned the tooth as an NHS procedure and it's been no problem since. We are very lucky to still have an NHS dentist with no problems getting appointments, and my latest dentist is a lovely girl.

If the offending tooth is at the back personally I would have it removed. There is no guarantee with root canal treatment that it will work.

MayBee70

I’m so lucky that my dentist is no longer taking on NHS patients but is still going to continue to provide a NHS-service for current patients. I was really expecting them to tell me that I was going to have to go private because they’ve refurbished the place and put a chandelier in the waiting room. I can’t get my head around the fact that this country isn’t providing NHS dental treatment for people and everyone just accepts it.

Do you mean free dental care, because unless you are on certain benefits, everyone has to pay towards the cost. NHS or private. There are also dental plans. I'm lucky, my dentist is still NHS, have to pay though, up to 306 for crowns etc. I've just been online, all dentists in one town near me taking on NHS patients, and a new one open in my town, taking both NHS and private, as mine does. so I do think where you live makes a difference.

I am so lucky to still have an NHS dentist although no new patients being taken unless private and the other dentist in the practice is all private.
I recently broke a corner of a tooth. No decay so he filled it with amalgam and with check up and clean and polish it was just over £70.
When my H was still alive he could no longer get to his old dentist so I took him to our nearest one.
£300+ for initial treatment and it went on from there.
Someone I know who does not have good teeth went for a checkup there and they quoted £2,400 for a few fillings.
She declined , went elsewhere and was quoted £600 for the same treatment.
She is highly delighted with the work done.

A friend of mine still has a NHS dentist but was advised to have her treatment done privately as she wouldn’t have the work done to a high enough standard if she had it done as an NHS patient. Although I had a check up the other day I wasn’t offered the usual scrape and polish that I usually have. Although, to be fair maybe that’s an annual thing and I may have had it done last time ( I was relieved, to be honest, because. I always seem to lose a filling after a a scrape and polish!). I dread to think how many mouth cancers are going to be missed because people aren’t having check up and heart disease is sometimes linked to bad dental hygiene. It’s such a false economy. I also know of a private dentist whose practice was taken over by a larger concern and he moved to another practice because the standard he was expected to work to after the takeover was far too low.

It’s a year long waiting list here in Australia for free dental treatment
Only emergencies are seen sooner.
Cost of private dentistry is completely crazy !

MayBee70

A friend of mine still has a NHS dentist but was advised to have her treatment done privately as she wouldn’t have the work done to a high enough standard if she had it done as an NHS patient. Although I had a check up the other day I wasn’t offered the usual scrape and polish that I usually have. Although, to be fair maybe that’s an annual thing and I may have had it done last time ( I was relieved, to be honest, because. I always seem to lose a filling after a a scrape and polish!). I dread to think how many mouth cancers are going to be missed because people aren’t having check up and heart disease is sometimes linked to bad dental hygiene. It’s such a false economy. I also know of a private dentist whose practice was taken over by a larger concern and he moved to another practice because the standard he was expected to work to after the takeover was far too low.

Scale and Polish is a thing of the past MaryBee70. They stopped doing these on the NHS many years ago. You now have to book to see a hygienist which costs about £80.

I had one recently. At least, that’s what I think it was. I have really sensitive teeth so I never forget having them: it’s always a real Marathon Man few minutes! They x rayed my teeth a few months ago as well. That’s when I wondered if they were doing it because they were going 100% private.

I think it is still the case that if an NHS patient requires a scale and polish they should have one on the NHS as part of their treatment - to make them dentally fit.

In my view, if a dentist is working on the NHS, the treatment should be at the same standard as if/when they are working privately.

Some treatments may not be cost effective on the NHS because of the way the contract is structured but it qould be unprofessional to do 2 standards of work

Why don’t we stop making Drs and dentists pay university fees, also stop making nurses go to university to qualify as a nurse, wouldn’t they do much better to learn hands on actually being in the hospitals full time, nurses are so stretched at the moment and the students can get on with blood tests etc. Anyway you may think it would cost us a lot to stop income from the Drs/Dentists university fees but you could then make them work for the NHS for 10/15 years before they go off for example to Australia or go private (Australia recently mocked us saying they look forward to our trained up professionals going over to work for them). After their stint in the NHS they could then take their expertise to the private industry or go off to other countries (still only being in late 30s or early 40s) having worked for the NHS and passing their expertise onto younger Drs/Dentists coming through. Let’s just stop all our young professionals being able to get highly trained and then go off to earn in the private industry and leaving the NHS without enough staff, (they don’t pay their full university fees by the way, it’s subsidised by taxpayers) I’m not saying they shouldn’t be able to earn more or work where they want, I just think it’s fairer if they don’t pay fees but in return they stay in the NHS for an agreed time (even 5 years would help at the moment)

My NHS dentist has effectively been private for years - incrementally reducing the time in the practice diary for NHS patients so that appointments are made for several months in the future so we’ve been used to private dental charges and have come to accept them. In some countries nobody gets dental care without paying privately so we’re just glad that for the vast majority of our lives we were lucky enough to get NHS care and now we factor our dental treatment into our annual budget as much as we can. At least we can get a private appointment without waiting three months.

For the pain and feeling generally grotty, I'd suggest you get any abscess drained (if you haven't already).
For a root canal, ask if your dentist can refer you to a dental school.
I had a root canal done at the Eastman in London - the dentist was qualified and was studying for a postgraduate qualification. It was in a back tooth with a cracked root (so high risk) but I'm munching away happily on it seven years later. However, I did have to wait months for an appointment – this depends on how many students they have.

lilcat while working overseas I had a (very painful and expensive!) root canal filling in a back tooth, and shortly after I returned to England it broke in half - the wonderful NHS dentist that I saw as an emergency asked why I had the root canal filling when the tooth wasn't biting on anything and I could just have had it removed! So I agree with other posters - if it's at the back, ask for advice about extracting it.

kittylester

In my view, if a dentist is working on the NHS, the treatment should be at the same standard as if/when they are working privately.

Some treatments may not be cost effective on the NHS because of the way the contract is structured but it qould be unprofessional to do 2 standards of work

I think it’s the time constraint on NHS work that’s the problem.