MANCHESTER – A woman from Manchester has sued her dentist for failing to diagnose her oral cancer. The 58-year-old was referred to the dentist for regular check-ups after she had developed a white patch on her gingiva. When he eventually referred her to the hospital after several appointments, the doctors diagnosed her with “seriously invasive cancer”.
As reported by The Telegraph Online, the patient had developed the white patch several years ago. The lesion was shown to be benign at that stage. In 2004, doctors at the University Dental Hospital of Manchester referred her to a local dentist, asking him to re-refer the woman should he or the patient notice any changes.
In June 2008, the patient consulted the dentist because she was worried about the patch. He dismissed her concerns. Another five appointments followed. The patient was advised to “manage” her complaint with mouthwash. Eventually, the dentist referred his patient to the hospital in April 2009, where she was diagnosed with oral cancer.
According to The Telegraph Online, the woman underwent “unpleasant surgery and radical treatment, including removal of affected bone and parts of her mouth and dissection of her lymph glands, which had been invaded by the tumour, followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy”.
In January 2013, the dentist was taken to court and his barrister stated that his client denied that he had been in any way at fault.
On 18 February, a High Court judge exonerated the dentist. The judge believed the dentist, who had stated that “he simply could not have failed to see the white patch when he examined the patient in June of 2008 and when he later treated her for soreness of the gum in the same area. He insisted that he would have recorded any concern expressed by her and would have referred her if the appearance of the white patch had been as described by her”.
The claim was dismissed.
LONDON, UK: King’s College London Dental Institute has reported that it has successfully tested a new set of tools that could help clinicians to ...
LONDON, UK: With Mouth Cancer Action Month in full swing, Cancer Research UK has launched a new oral cancer toolkit in partnership with the British Dental ...
LONDON, UK: In an ever increasingly competitive world, anxiety around legal ramifications in the workplace due to any number of reasons may also be ...
KILMARNOCK – A dentist from Scotland has been placed under one-year supervision after failing to identify a cancerous ulcer in the mouth of a patient....
CAMBRIDGE, UK: Patients with mouth cancer wait for around one month after first spotting symptoms before visiting their general practitioner; those with ...
RUGBY, UK: In a large series of studies conducted in Italy and Switzerland, researchers have found that people who ate green vegetables were less likely to ...
LONDON, UK: Young men are more likely to develop oral cancer than any other demographic in the UK, new figures by Cancer Research UK suggest. While men in ...
LONDON, UK: Lifestyle habits like smoking, drinking alcohol or an unbalanced diet, in addition to human papillomavirus infections, appear to have resulted ...
BRUSSELS, Belgium/RUGBY, UK: At the recent 2019 European Cancer Summit of the European CanCer Organisation (ECCO), the ECCO Oncopolicy Committee agreed on a...
Dr. Elisa Chavez DDS, Dr. Teresa A. Dolan DDS, MPH, Dr. Linda Niessen, Dr. Lisa Simon
Live webinar
Wed. 1 October 2025
6:00 pm UTC (London)
Live webinar
Thu. 2 October 2025
2:00 pm UTC (London)
Live webinar
Mon. 6 October 2025
5:30 pm UTC (London)
Live webinar
Tue. 7 October 2025
5:30 pm UTC (London)
Prof. Dr. Falk Schwendicke MDPH
Live webinar
Thu. 9 October 2025
1:00 pm UTC (London)
Dr. Priyantha Pang Lee Yek
Live webinar
Fri. 10 October 2025
10:00 am UTC (London)
Prof. Dr. Dr. Florian Stelzle
To post a reply please login or register