Western Dental Services

This review reflects my experience with James Sunwoo, and this review is not intended to be critical of the dentist office he is working for. James Sunwoo is an oral surgeon who at least the time of this review date, works with Western Dental, he is the dentist who does the tooth extractions. I know because I went to a tooth extraction appointment in which he was my oral surgeon, James Sunwoo removed the top part of one of my lower right submolar. Is anyone reading wondering why James Sunwoo removed only part of my submolar? That is what I was wondering when it happened to me. I had waited 17 days to have the submolar removed from the day the appointment was scheduled, and so when James Sunwoo attempted to pull the submolar that day, the entire top of the submolar broke off from the lower half, and he refused to pull the rest of the tooth. I realize that tooth extractions get more difficult when the tooth does not pull out all at once, but he did begin the process, and so I feel as if he should have finished extracting my tooth that same day, even if it meant completing a more difficult than expected tooth extraction. My appointment with James Sunwoo that day was at 2 pm, he had plenty of time before the day was over with, I am not sure what his motivation was when he refused to pull the rest of my tooth. During the appointment, I asked James Sunwoo many times to keep trying to remove my tooth, I even asked nearby nurses to try to convince him to finish extracting my tooth. James Sunwoo at one point made a comment to me which sounded like he thought I was faking it when I had winced in pain, of which I winced because I was not expecting the pain, and it was more than I had experienced during any previous dental procedure. The point at which I had briefly winced in pain, James Sunwoo went to work on another patient for around 10 minutes, he did mention he was going to wait longer for the tooth to numb up, he came back and then he said the following to me, or something pretty close to it: "All right, are you ready to try again, because if you are not able to manage this time, we are most likely going to be done for the day." I quickly responded from a stunned perspective, having not expected him to say that: I said, what are you talking about, you barely even spent any time trying to remove the tooth, then when I momentarily winced when I felt the unexpected pain, you went away to help another patient, then you come back and have the nerve to say that to me, what is your problem? I cannot say for sure, but maybe James Sunwoo might have been skimping on the lidocaine. I image that a dentist using less lidocaine would result in lower cost of treatment, I am not trying to be overly suspicious, but how would a patient know if this had occurred? All I know is that lidocaine is what dentists almost always use to numb teeth, this is because it is very effective at relieving pain, and is rather fast acting. If a tooth area is properly numbed, it makes no sense that a patient would feel any pain once the dentist begins extracting a tooth. It is normal to be able to feel a sensation upon the tooth being removed, but is should not be painful. This is why I began wondering why I felt pain like that during the tooth extraction attempt, James Sunwoo is the one who injected my tooth area with lidocaine, did he inject my tooth area with enough lidocaine to achieve sufficient pain relief? I have in the past, had one visit in which a dentist gave me the numbing shots, then began drilling my tooth before my tooth became fully numb, that was unpleasant. From my experience it seems to take around 5 minutes for lidocaine to numb a tooth area. I can say for sure that after James Sunwoo gave me the lidocaine shots that day, that he did indeed wait around 8 minutes after the shots, before he began trying to pull the tooth, so the fact that I ended up feeling the unexpected pain, is the main reason I questioned whether or not he injected my tooth area with enough lidocaine. At the point of which James Sunwoo refused to finish my tooth extraction, he did refer me for a anesthetic drip, which I mentioned to him that I did not prefer that, but he insisted anyway and would not finish extracting my tooth. I told James Sunwoo that I did not see how he could pull the top of my tooth off and send me away without having finished the tooth extraction, this is where James Sunwoo's behavior got really unexpected, he picked up a small piece of tooth from the dentist tray and he said the following: This is all that I pulled out. The small piece of tooth that James Sunwoo picked up and was referring to, was not even 1/8 of the total mass of tooth that he had actually pulled from my mouth. I know, I brush and water floss my teeth thoroughly every day at least two times a day, that submolar indeed had enough surface area to still be useful in chewing up food, so for James Sunwoo to be willing to lie and claim he only removed that small piece, that is behavior not fitting of an oral surgeon. The x-rays I have on file at Western Dental, which I had taken not too long before the tooth extraction, are proof that my submolar had quite a bit of the tooth mass that was sticking above the gum line, it was indeed around half of the entire outer part of the tooth with a small hole in the middle, which had been drilled out from a previous dental procedure. That day I ended up being sent away with the referral for the sedation drip that James Sunwoo insisted upon, and I was scheduled for another tooth extraction, it was for almost 2 weeks later, that is a long time for a person to deal with a tooth that is worse than it already was. After this eventful dentist appointment, I went home and took a picture of the tooth area, as once I looked at it I realized that the freshly sagging gum line that was surrounding the tooth, is more visual proof that a noticeable amount of tooth mass was freshly removed from the area, I wanted all the proof I could get that James Sunwoo had indeed removed way more tooth mass than he had claimed. James Sunwoo's behavior that day during my appointment, is the only reason I am writing this review, I feel as if he might have had too many patients to handle that day, and that maybe he did not feel like handling the more difficult tooth extractions. I do try to be understand of people's behavior and be forgiving person, but this happening was ridiculous. I almost felt like getting a lawyer and filing a lawsuit against James Sunwoo, but I did not want this to end up bringing too much attention to Western Dental, as I realize that it was James Sunwoo who chose to be this way, and I realize that Western Dental as a business does not approve of this type of behavior.

This is my second review of my local Western Dental, I just remembered of the past bad experiences I had at this same dentist office, and now I am motivated to write about those experiences, to allow others to know what to look out for if ever visiting this dentist office.
The first complaint is about their process of taking x-rays of the patients teeth. The process they use as of 9/11/15 is to use a device that they place into the patients mouth at varying angles all the way around the mouth to get quite a few x-ray images of all of the teeth. The problem is that this device they use has point edges that jab into the sensitive mouth tissue. The x-ray technician places this x-ray device in your mouth and tells you to bite down. How is anyone supposed to easily bite down on something that is jabbing into a sensitive part of the mouth, even to the point of it causing a bit of bleeding in the mouth afterwards. The x-ray device is not very well designed, it should have no pointy edges that could jab into a patients mouth, and it actually has a fairly heavy metal piece connected to it, which makes it necessary to bite down on it quite hard for it to stay in place while the x-ray is being taken.
I would describe my Western Dental experience of having x-rays taken as quite unpleasant.
My next and most unpleasant experience at my local Western Dental, is about the dentist being insensitive to my experiencing pain. On one particular dentist visit, the dentist lady gave me the usual set of shots injecting a local anesthetic at the gum line of the tooth she was going to be drilling on, then to my surprise she began drilling the tooth after only about 1 minute.
I wondered why this dentist did not wait longer for the lidocaine to sufficiently numb the tooth.
As the dentist lady began to drill my tooth this day, she made a comment that if I felt any pain that she would stop and wait longer for the anesthetic to numb the area even more. Immediately when she began drilling the tooth I felt the pain and I had to ask her to stop because of the pain from the tooth not being numb enough yet. It is really unpleasant to have a dentist drill on a tooth that has not yet fully numbed.
Looking back at this experience, I am wondering if it might be considered negligence to begin to drill a patients tooth before waiting long enough for the tooth to become sufficiently numb.
In my experience, if a dentist waits about 5 minutes after injecting the lidocaine before drilling the tooth, then there is really no pain felt during the drilling process.
There is probably even a dental industry suggested amount of waiting time after a local anesthetic injection is administered, before beginning to drill the patients tooth.
My last complaint is what I experienced during my last 2 visits to my local Western Dental office, and this complaint has to do with the wait times when showing up for an appointment.
It would seem like if you call several days ahead and schedule an appointment, then when you show up for the appointment at the scheduled time, it would not be uncommon to expect to be called for your visit not long after the scheduled time.
For some reason, the last two times I went to my appointments at my local Western Dental, I showed up for my appointment on time, they asked me to fill out the usual paperwork, and then I had to wait over an hour before my name was called. This is what you would expect if you were to show up without an appointment and expect to be seen that same day.
Maybe they might be trying to see more patients than the available dentists on hand can easily handle.

4 days ago my tooth began to hurt to the point it was obvious it needed to be pulled. I already had work done on this tooth, and I was hoping Medi-Cal could eventually increase their coverage of procedures so that I could use my Medi-Cal to pay for a root canal, and so when my tooth began hurting, I knew I could not wait for Medi-Cal coverage and that my tooth needed pulling. From the condition of my tooth, having a discolored tooth that has a big gaping hole and beginning to seriously ache, it was obvious, pulling the tooth is the only solution. I called Western Dental and asked to schedule an appointment for my tooth to be pulled, today on 9/11/15 is when my scheduled appointment was, I went to my local Western Dental today and was expecting to have my tooth pulled.
I had some x-rays done and was placed in another room, I expected the dentist to show up and pull my tooth, and this is not what happened, I was told my tooth did need pulling and I was scheduled on 9/29/15 to have it pulled. This is 17 days to wait to have my tooth pulled, when I thought that was what was going to be done today.
Then I asked the dentist if I had to wait that long for an appointment, if I could get some medication for the pain until then, the dentist wrote me a prescription. Once I was speaking with the receptionist before leaving the dentist office, she gave me the prescription and I had to ask her what it was for, as the writing on the prescription was so sloppy I could not even read it, when she told me it was for Motrin I made a complaint that it was not a strong enough medication for my tooth needing extraction. My complaint did result in them writing me a prescription for Tylenol 3, that is better than Motrin, but it seems to me like Tylenol 3 was still not sufficient.
If you are in serious pain and need some medications to get you by until your teeth can be worked on, then you might really have to beg for it, or else you may end up being written a prescription for Motrin, which is the same thing as Ibuprofen.
It would seem like a dentist would be completely aware of how much an aching tooth can hurt, and for the dentist to write me a prescription for Motrin and expect me to wait 17 days before my tooth can be pulled, that is sort of illogical.
It is not like I was some crack head wanting a pill popping fix with no valid reason for needing some pain medications.
I would not have complained at all if the dentist would have given me a reasonable prescription for hydrocodone, which is common for a serious tooth ache.
What a waste to expect to receive any reasonable medications for an aching tooth during my 17 day waiting period until they could have it extracted.
I am wondering, are tooth extractions really so uncommon that this particular Western Dental only has tooth extraction appointments once or twice a month.
It seems like pulling teeth would be common enough at a dentist's office, so that they would have a dentist capable of pulling teeth available on any given day.
Do you have an aching tooth that needs pulling, if so you might have to wait two weeks or more to get an appointment for a tooth extraction at Western Dental, at least that was my experience.