Entertainment
Man pulls own teeth out with pliers after years of trying to register with NHS dentist-Rebecca Sayce-Entertainment – Metro
The hosts were left horrified by his story.
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This Morning hosts Josie Gibson and Craig Doyle were left speechless after meeting a man forced to pull out his own teeth with pliers after years of trying to register with an NHS dentist.
Alex Gray, a former roofer from Basingstoke, spoke on the ITV breakfast show about how he had been doing his own dentistry for ‘about seven years’ after not being able to access an NHS dentist.
It came after he moved to a new area following the death of his previous dentist, and could not register with another practitioner. Even after moving to Lincoln to be near his family, he could not find a dentist taking new patients.
This led him to remove his own teeth with pliers from his toolbox, something Craig described as ‘gruesome.’
When asked by Josie why he had chosen to start doing his own dental work, he said he had been left with ‘no choice.’
‘I was in so much pain as you can imagine. If you’ve had a toothache, you know what the pain is like,’ he began, detailing the day he removed his first tooth.
Alex Gray appeared on This Morning speaking about why he started doing his own dental work (Picture: ITV)
‘It got really bad. I tried drinking warm, I tried drinking cold, it didn’t help in fact it made it worse.
‘I tried ringing dentists and in the end, I started to do that with a pair of pliers,’ he continued, gesturing to tugging at his teeth in his mouth.
‘It just made even more pain. So I got my Co-codamol out which I had for my knee. I took four, and I still had the toothache but I started to get a bit dizzy. Then I went to pull it out and it didn’t feel as difficult.’
Since then he said he had continued to try and register with a dentist but had just been told he could be put on the waiting list and contacted when a place becomes available.
Josie commented that he looked like he still ‘had a lot of teeth’, leading Alex to show his teeth to the hosts who were left speechless. He commented that the reason his teeth appeared small is that they were broken from attempts to remove them with pliers.
The former roofer said he extracted his first tooth after being unable to register with an NHS dentist (Picture: ITV)
He also shocked Josie and Craig by revealing he had actually cut his mouth the first time he had attempted to remove a tooth but managed to avoid an infection.
It follows a damning report by the Health and Social Care Committee into NHS dentistry has called for ‘urgent and fundamental reform’ and said there was evidence of pain and distress that is ‘totally unacceptable in the 21st century’.
It cites a YouGov poll of 2,104 people across the UK conducted in March 2023.
It found 10% of people had tried ‘DIY dentistry’, with more than half of the group attempting it in the last year and a fifth saying that they did so because they couldn’t find a dentist on the NHS.
The survey also revealed 22% of people were not registered with a dentist, with 23% of those saying it is because they cannot afford treatment.
Last year a BBC investigation found nine in 10 NHS dental practices across the UK are not accepting new adult patients.
The decline in NHS dentistry should be ‘sounding alarm bells’, the committee’s chairman, Steven Brine, said, adding: ‘Today we register in the strongest terms possible our concern for the future of NHS dental services and the patients who desperately need access to them.‘
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