A BOLTON dentist has paid £33,500 in compensation after failing to treat a woman's tooth decay for two decades.

Tracy Braham, 39, from Colne, visited Dr Peter Moss’s dental practice in Bury Road, Bolton every six months for regular check-ups between 1993 and 2015.

But she said the dentist’s failure to diagnose and treat decay left her needing extensive root canal treatment, fillings and implants.

Mrs Braham said: “I saw Dr Moss for regular check-ups and he always said everything was fine.”

“He’d been my dentist since I was 15 and I completely trusted him. I had some fillings and root canal treatments over the years, and in hindsight they always ended up needing to be repeated.

“But Dr Moss always indicated this was normal so I never questioned it. When I moved I went to a new dentist.

“I was surprised when he told me my teeth needed attention but I went back to Dr Moss as I wasn’t sure whether to believe my new dentist, and Dr Moss had always said my teeth were in good health.

“Dr Moss reassured me that one of my teeth needed root canal treatment, but that the rest were fine and didn’t need fillings. He was my long-term dentist so I trusted him.”

Mrs Braham decided to remain as Dr Moss’s patient, but she eventually saw a new dentist in 2015 when Dr Moss retired. He immediately advised that there was significant decay at many of her teeth and that she needed extensive treatment.

It saw Mrs Braham contact the law firm Dental Law Partnership, who took on her case in May 2016.

Analysis of her dental records revealed that Dr Moss had consistently failed to spot and treat decay that had been clearly visible on X-rays for years. The dentist was also found to have performed poor restorative work and root canal treatment.

As a result, Mrs Braham has had to have further root canal treatments and many more fillings, and is likely to need more corrective work in the future. The case was successfully settled last November, when the dentist paid £33,500 in an out-of-court settlement. The dentist did not admit liability.

Tim Armitage of the Dental Law Partnership said: “What our client went through was completely unnecessary. If the dentist had undertaken the proper treatment in the first place the suffering she experienced could have been avoided.

“We hope the compensation she receives goes some way towards paying for any additional treatment required.”

Dr Peter Moss was unavailable for comment.