TWELVE patients suffered botched treatment at a school set up to train new dentists.
One patient was left with damage to an adjacent tooth after work was carried out and another suffered tissue damage caused by dental bleach.
And some endodontic patients - mainly people booked in for root canal treatment - ended up with perforations, the over preparation of teeth and the wrong tooth being worked on.
Inspectors from an industry watchdog have raised concerns about a visit to the Aberdeen Dental School in April 2014.
The General Dental Council report comes as Aberdeen University searches for a new director of dentistry following the departure of Professor Helen Craddock, who retired last autumn after a year in the job.
The report said: "Inspectors were concerned that a number of patients had been harmed and disappointed that the significant threats to the programme were not identified earlier by the school.
"While it was accepted that the graduating cohort's exposure to the full range of procedures had been negatively impacted by the situation with patient supply, what was seen on occasions were examples of the lowest level of care expected of a safe beginner."
A third of the 22 dental students failed to graduate last year.
An Aberdeen University spokeswoman said: "We welcome these inspections as an opportunity for benchmarking our performance, and providing areas for learning, so that we continually improve in training student dentists for clinical practice.
"Feedback from postgraduate trainers details the very positive contribution and safe practice of previous Aberdeen graduates as they begin their careers as practising dentists."
The university stated that students had been working on patients under the supervision of an experienced senior dental clinician when the "adverse events" had happened.
The spokeswoman added: "The patients involved were made immediately aware of any concern with their treatment and the problems were promptly addressed. There were no complaints from the patients, and all processes within the school were reviewed and further improved."
Jane Pierce, head of education and quality assurance at the General Dental Council, said: "Ensuring patient safety is the core function of the GDC and we are working closely with Aberdeen Dental School to ensure that the issues identified by our inspectors are addressed urgently.
"A further re-inspection will take place in the current academic year."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article