Dental practices across the county say they are now open for business following mass shortages of PPE, which left patients unable to access services or treatment for months.

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, many patients in East Lancashire were forced to go without treatment, and in some cases left in agony, due to a lack of personal protective equipment available in dental surgeries.

But now patients are being told that 'all dental practices across Lancashire and South Cumbria are open and offering face to face appointments' with 92 percent of these practices have been able to resume offering treatments such as fillings and complex extraction.

A spokesperson for NHS England and NHS Improvement (North West) said: “All dental practices across Lancashire and South Cumbria are open and offering face to face appointments, supporting patients with urgent or complex ongoing dental care needs, while working through patient lists and contacting patients whose treatment was delayed due to lockdown.

“Ninety two percent of practices across Lancashire and South Cumbria have been able to resume offering treatments such as fillings and complex extractions, with the necessary infection prevention and control measures.”

At the start of the pandemic, NHS England insisted that provisions had been made to make sure that people most in need could still receive treatment despite the suspension of routine care.

However the British Dental Association (BDA) contradicted the claim, saying operations had been severely impaired by a lack of PPE.

One patient from Darwen, who wished to remain anonymous, said she suffered a badly snapped tooth and could not see a dentist due to a lack of PPE.

The patient said: "This is an issue that needs urgent treatment in case of recurring infection and according to NHS 111 online I needed to see a dentist within the hour, but I couldn't get anywhere at all.

"My local dentist wasn't seeing face-to-face appointments for any reason no matter how severe.”

The patient said she heard there could have been thousands of cases of people going without care and that staff at dental surgeries had been deeply distressed by their inability to help people.

Due to the suspension of normal services NHS England set up a network of urgent care centres.

However, according to the BDA, a third of the centres in England were inactive, while those that were operational were severely restricted due to chronic PPE shortages.

Cases left untreated have included broken teeth and abscesses, with research carried out by the BDA suggesting only 62 percent of respondents in England reporting their sites as active, and 58 percent of dentists reporting they did not feel fully protected at the sites they were working at.

The NHS England and NHS Improvement spokesperson said it would take time to fully restore dental services to the levels seen prior to lockdown, due to public health requirements for strict infection prevention control measures needed between each patient’s treatment to keep patients and staff safe, social distancing in waiting rooms and the requirement to use enhanced PPE dependent on the dental procedures being delivered.

They added: "This safety-first approach may mean that some practices are not yet able to offer the full level of service that they would want at this point in time.

"There are 188 urgent dental centres across the North West who continue to see and treat patients.

"These centres were established during the pandemic to offer services to patients who don’t have a regular dentist or who can’t be treated by their local dental practice."

For more information go to nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-dentist