A YORK man resorted to pulling out one of his own teeth at home, because he couldn’t get an appointment with an NHS dentist.

Phil Shepherdson, 72, from Woodthorpe, who is registered with an NHS dental practice, took the drastic action last year when he was told he could see a dental hygienist, but not a dentist.

He said: “My only resort to my tooth problems was extracting my own tooth.”

He said he used his fingers to work the lower front tooth loose and then pull it out.

Afterwards, he swilled his mouth out with mouthwash and saline solution so it didn’t get infected.

It was ‘quite easy’ because his tooth had already been ‘quite loose’, he said.

“But I would not recommend it – we should not have to do this.”

Mr Shepherdson spoke out following news that the BUPA Dental Care facility in Holgate - which is not his practice - was to close.

He said he was angry at the ‘Dickensian’ state of dental health care in the UK today.

“If I had gone private, I would probably have got straight in. But that would have costs hundreds of pounds,” he said.

York Central MP Rachael Maskell, who recently presented a petition in parliament calling on the Government to stop the closure of BUPA Dental Care in Holgate - which has 4,200 registered NHS patients - said she was ‘continually shocked’ by the poor state of dentistry in the city.

She said: “I have heard of several cases of ‘DIY dentistry’. It is just not acceptable.”

She said she would be calling a summit of dental health care professionals and organisations in York next month to discuss the issue. She and fellow York MP Julian Sturdy have also had meetings with health minister Neil O’Brien .

Ms Maskell said NHS dentistry in York was getting 'worse and worse'.

As long ago as July 2021 a survey by Healthwatch York revealed that no dental surgeries in York were taking on new adult patients on the NHS.

In June last year, Ms Maskell revealed that fewer than half of her constituents - and only 59 per cent of children - had seen a dentist in the previous year. In one dental practice alone, she said, four dentists had recently quit the NHS.

In a parliamentary debate on dentistry in May this year, meanwhile, she told MPs York and North Yorkshire had become a ‘dental desert’.

“Thousands of my constituents cannot even get on a waiting list,” she said. “Children are having their teeth pulled out, and adults are getting the pliers out."

The waiting list to access NHS dentistry in York has now risen to seven years, she said.

In a statement earlier this month, the government insisted it was spending more than £3bn a year on improving access to NHS dental care.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We have already implemented a package of improvements. This includes better remuneration for practices for providing complex treatment.

“We have amended the guidelines so dental therapists and hygienists can deliver more treatments - as well as making it easier to recruit dentists from overseas - and we will be setting out further measures to improve access shortly.”

But Ms Maskell says the UK urgently needs a ‘National NHS Dental Service’ - in which dentistry is treated the same as any other area of medicine.

“We have to put the mouth back in the body,” she said.