Untreated Gum Disease

A Basic Periodontal Examination is expected at routine examinations. It takes under a minute: the dentist runs a probe around each sextant of the mouth and records a score. That score dictates what follows — monitoring, a hygienist referral, full periodontal charting, or referral to a specialist. Where scores indicate disease, radiographs are needed to assess bone levels. None of this is specialist work; it is ordinary general practice, and it is recorded in a single line of the notes.

Gum disease claims rarely involve a single dramatic error. They involve years of attendance during which nothing was recorded.

• No periodontal scores across multiple consecutive examinations
• Bleeding gums reported by the patient, noted, and never investigated
• Bone loss visible on radiographs taken for other reasons and never acted on
• Scale-and-polish provided repeatedly in place of actual periodontal treatment
• No referral to a hygienist or periodontist as the condition worsened
• The patient never told they had the disease, so never given the chance to act

Periodontal disease destroys the bone that holds teeth in place, and that bone does not grow back. Caught early it can be stabilised and the teeth kept for life. Caught late, the remaining options are extraction and replacement. Implants require sufficient bone volume, so the patients who have lost the most are often the least suitable candidates for the best replacement — which is why these claims frequently have to fund bone grafting as well as the implants themselves.

These claims are won and lost on what the notes do not say. An absence of periodontal scoring across years of examinations is powerful evidence, because the examination is expected, quick, and hard to explain away. Serial radiographs matter equally: they show bone levels at intervals and allow an expert to say when the disease became visible and what would have been saved by acting then. Request the complete record, including every radiograph at full resolution.