Charles Street Dental Surgery

It's a dental surgery, so kind of does what you expect - houses dentists to look at your teeth, for example.

Good location if you work/live near Cardiff City Centre. I was able to get an emergency appointment approximately 24hrs after requesting it.

Always received excellent care. Lorna is great with the kids, always making them smile and laugh which puts them at ease. She is patient with my eldest, who at first was very anxious when coming to the dentist. They now look forward to coming and getting their sticker.

This is a somewhat belated review we've been meaning to leave since 2012 (!), so may no longer be applicable if this practice has improved its standards and level of attention to NHS patients; Dr L Thomas may also no longer be working there. Nonetheless, we feel it is in the public interest to raise these concerns, which may be applicable beyond this single practice.

The treatment provided to our then-6 year old child was highly unsatisfactory. We saw the dentist regularly and no issues were brought up; on the last visit, we had to raise our concerns ourselves, due to our child complaining of pain in the teeth. Again these were dismissed, allegedly because it is common practice to leave baby teeth untreated since they will fall out anyway (this is almost verbatim what we were told). We were also given this sole piece of advice: to have the child drink juice through a straw. Never mind that as parents we didn't even allow sugary drinks.

Less than one month later, my partner took our child to their family dentist in Canada and he discovered advanced caries, and an abscess on one side. Back in the UK, a well regarded private dentist (who also is lead dentist at an NHS hospital) did excellent work but 4 teeth still had to be removed in a procedure that was traumatic and still remembered by my child.

We wrote a letter of complaint to the practice and received a begrudging apology, which mainly consisted of suggesting that it was our fault (because her appointment was just over the 6 month recommended interval and tooth brushing could have been better); claiming there was nothing in their records about me raising concerns (patently false, but says more about their record keeping); and absolving their own responsibility, because apparently 'best practices' had been strictly followed (i.e. a minimalist approach relying on policy from 2001), and because the caries could have developed rapidly between the visit to the Cardiff dentist and the Canadian dentist. REALLY? In ONE MONTH?! The diagnosis was 3 fillings, 4 crowns, 4 extractions. That happened in a month? It was ridiculous. In terms of the situation being our fault, there is predisposition to caries in our family because of deep grooves in the molars. But regardless, the dentist should have picked up on, and treated, the serious problems with my child's teeth much earlier than this. No wonder the UK gets a bad rap for how bad people's teeth are. The Canadian dentist mentioned how often he sees major dental problems in children from the UK, due to inadequate treatment by the NHS. The response also suggested that "had you contacted the surgery...we would of course have arranged a further examination" -- well, we had in fact moved to London so that would have been a bit inconvenient, not to mention the lack of trust which would have made such a return very unlikely.

Overall our experience was one of very perfunctory examinations (5 minutes), and little interest in our concerns. Oh and we had also previously requested fluoride treatments (routine in Canada) which we were refused as well.

They left my sister in pain for over a month.
Not only they make her wait in such a pain but on the day of the appointment the doctor instead of treating the tooth, recommended her to take the antibiotics because he could not get the operation done that day. When my sister insisted that she wanted at least a small treatment for her tooth that day, because she could no longer bear the pain, he then decided to give her a provisional treatment on her tooth, a procedure that lasted only 10 minutes, a treatment that he didn't even wanted to do in the beginning, but he rather preferred to stuff her with antibiotics. This 10 minutes job costs her £ 85!
In my opinion she shouldn't have even paid for a tooth that was already been treated by the same dentist in the past and was hurting her again, she shouldn't have paid for a job that took only 10 minutes to get done and he didn't even wanted to do, and for making her wait more than 1 month, using the excuse that she was abroad and she had to self isolate for 14 days before the appointment, whereas he told her before the departure that she souldn't have to self isolate on the way back to the UK if the country she was visiting wasn't in the UK list, and it wasn't! She relied on what he said and waited until she was back to the UK but then he changed his mind.
I will surely ask my sister to put a claim against this surgery.

Excellent service every time we go. Always recommend to friends and family.
Lorna and the team are fab!

Go here for check ups. They are nice and polite, I feel taken care of, the dentist I saw (the Tuesday Thursday one) was very gentle and also explained everything he was doing in a calming helpful way.

Brilliant dentist, especially Rhys and Debbie, always happy with the work they do. been going there for 45 years and wouldn't go anywhere else. Highly recommended! Great friendly reception from Meghan, Lorna and Bethany Aswell.

They were able to book me in for a scale and polish even though I am not a regular patient here and I am very happy with the results. I also had an email query which was dealt with very promptly by reception. Excellent service!