Forty clinical illustrations

Dental Update has been in the forefront of clinical dental photography for decades but, most recently, in the form of a series of papers by Mike Sharland (‘Mr Photography in Dentistry’), the most recent of which appeared in the 40th Anniversary issue of this journal.1 Among the uses of dental photography are education of peers by way of lectures and study groups, as a record – this being of potential value in the defence of a patient complaint, and in education of patients. My recent experience in a medicolegal case was related to patient education in a perverse sense, since the motive of sending 40 clinical illustrations to a patient is questionable, but seemed to be to encourage a patient to sue her dentist.

The story commenced when a patient changed to a new dentist after four years of attendance at the same dentist, seemingly with no problems (the patient having been attracted to the ‘new’ dentist because of the offer of a free check-up and a free scale and polish). The ‘new’ dentist stated that he did not like what he saw in the patient's teeth, took 40 clinical pictures and sent these to the patient. Thus the complaint was initiated. Given that we teach our students on the University of Birmingham Distance Masters in Advanced General Dental Practice to take a standard 14 photographs of the patients who they are presenting, 40 pictures seemed like overkill to me and suggested that the only motive of this action was to land the previous dentist in some sort of trouble and/or for the second dentist to seek to ingratiate himself to the patient.