Girl, eight, with dentist phobia died after teeth surgery

A schoolgirl with a phobia of dentists died after refusing to eat or speak when she woke from surgery to find all her milk teeth had been removed.

Sophie Waller, eight, never spoke again after the surgery, when dentists at the Royal Hospital Truro in Cornwall decided to take out all of her milk teeth to save her future trauma.

Her family are now demanding to know why an inquest has not yet been held into what caused her death in December 2005.



She had been taken to the hospital after breaking a tooth, but refused for days to open her mouth to doctors, traumatised by a phobia she developed three years earlier aged five after a dentist cut her tongue.

Following the operation she would only eat watermelon and would not speak to anyone. After three weeks her parents took her home, where she died a week later.

Her mother Janet Waller criticised the hospital, which has since been ranked as Britain's worst, and said that she had been given no answers as to what had killed her daughter.

Photo from here.