Hornung Neil S

Very professional with excellent post op care. Highly recommended! Dr Hornung has a great sense of humor and expertise. He gave honest answers to questions and made the entire procedure as painless as possible.

Back in 2000 I went to this place to get my wisdom teeth taken out. In the months that followed after I started to have jaw problems and developed TMJ. At one point my jaw locked open and had to go the the E.R. To this day I still have TMJ that is getting worse. To be fair I cannot say with 100% certainty that this place caused my jaw problems, but I have a strong feeling that they messed up my jaw during surgery.
Also, back in 2010, my GF went to this place, at the recommendation of her dentist, to have your wisdom teeth taken out. After her surgery, and to this day, she has lost feeling in half of her tongue. I can say with 100% certainty that her visit here was a result of that.

I had two wisdom teeth taken out at dental dreams, no problem, was back to work the very next day. I had two wisdom teeth taken out here Wednesday and since then the pain has only gotten worse. I have hardly been able to sleep or eat since I got it done. I also have not been able to work I had to call once because they forgot to give me my doctor’s note in the first place, had to wait a whole day to get a call back. Then the medicine they gave me made me very itchy. So I had to call to get that changed. The pain never got better, it has radiated into my ears and my head. My throat is also sore. I noticed my stitches had come loose and we dangling in my mouth. Yesterday I asked my husband to put a little oragel on the sores in my mouth. I can hardly open it so it took the two of us. When he looked inside he literally started to gag. I pried my mouth open and looked in it with a flashlight and saw that the stitched were indeed broken and the whole on one side was completely packed with brownish green and bloody puss as well as food despite my efforts at rinsing. I also noticed that when i pulled my cheek open the other side that is mostly closed was oozing a greenish substance that tasted horrible. When I pushed on it further puss came out. I tried to rinse and rinse and rinse but whatever was in the gaping hole would not come out. I called the dentist and told them the pain was unbearable so they set up an appointment for me to go in today. The treatment I got was completely unprofessional and rude. The doctor came in for about two minutes to take the stitches out but then left to go do something else!!! He then left the nurses to do it. So the took the one side out and when they went to do the other side said «oh this side isn’t even stitched up.» So stitches had broken as I suspected. Now because of this food or something had gotten lodged very deep in and I got out what i could with a q-​tip but no amount of rinsing was getting it out. The nurse told me I was not rinsing my mouth very rudely. I’m sorry do you live with me??? I had been rinsing the whole time. I told her I had been rinsing but it was not getting the food out because the hole was so deep and swollen. How is this my fault because the stitches the doctor put in broke!?! Nice practice to blame your patients. She kept insisting that I had not rinsed my mouth… basically calling me a liar. She then just dropped a syringe bulb in my lap. She then told me I reeked of cigarettes… I had one. I am aware that smoking is not good after oral surgery and my instructions recommended that I TRY not to smoke for 48 hours. I was also told that I should try not to or at least limit it. Well if I could just quite smoking at the drop of a hat wouldn’t you think I would have done so already? It’s not exactly that simple. Nicotine is actually the most addictive drug on the planet, thanks. When I had my top wisdom teeth out I smoked also, I made sure to rinse and I had no pain and not a single problem. The nurse told me this was basically a lie (they didn’t even do the surgery) she then told me I must have had dentures!?! Seriously, clearly you didn’t even look at my mouth or you would know there are no dentures, also why on earth would you get your wisdom teeth replaced with dentures!?! Stupid. They cleaned out the extraction site where the stitches had broke all the while blaming me for it because clearly I stitched it myself. The nurse then took the metal tool and bashed it along all my teeth before taking it out on purpose. Completely unprofessional. I was unable to talk about any of my symptoms or issues I was having and the doctor hardly examined anything. I tried to ask why puss was leaking out of one of the sides, but he gave me no answer and essentially ignored the question. The nurse continued to go on about how the pain was all my fault for not rinsing even though I had told her multiple times I was. The doctor have me new rx for pain medicine. She told me this was stronger medication than the one first prescribed. She also told me I had to eat with it and that I could not drive and should stay at home while on the medication. I asked what I should do about work. She refused to give me a doctors note. She said you only get one for seven days so you can’t have one. I explained to her that the one written was good until Monday (I could go back) which was not seven days. She said yes it is you didn’t just have the surgery. I told her I had the surgery wednesday afternoon (something they could have read from the chart) so the note got me out of work Thursday, Friday, Saturday, + Sunday. She told me that was 7 days. I explained that Thursday to Sunday was only 4 days off and since I am allowed 7 why then could I not have a doctor’s note. She just told me I couldn’t have one and that was that. I then noticed that they gave me the same exact RX as before even though I had called and told them I was allergic to it just a couple days ago!!!

I was very pleased with the work Dr. Hornung did on my wisdom teeth last July. I’d already been through braces, emergency root canal surgery, and having teeth pulled, and yet I was still crazy anxious about having my wisdom teeth out. Once my insurance (and my wisdom teeth headaches) kicked in, I finally started doing research. This was one of the first of three places I called that would take on new patients for surgery, their price was the best (about 1300 or so), and their location was convenient enough for my mom to help me get home post-​surgery. Oh, and they had a Mastercard finance plan, or so I thought.
I went in for a consultation. They showed me a video on all the potential hazards that can come from the surgical process (grrreeeat!). They X-​rayed my mouth and then showed me why it was imperative that I get it done ASAP. All of my teeth were impacted, and one had a cyst growing around it. (Woo!) So, we scheduled the surgery a month out, enough time to get it pre-​approved by my insurance company and all that jazz. A little bit of time goes by and they call me with my estimate and how much I owe them in relation to what insurance was covering. It was not bad at all considering I didn’t have the best insurance coverage, but it was enough.
Finally, surgery day arrives! Designated Driver Mom and I got there on time and checked in. What happened next surprised me. The secretary at the front said they need final payment in order to perform the surgery. I asked them what happened to their finance plan and they said they were no longer doing that anymore. Flustered and growing more anxious by the minute, I explained that I wasn’t prepared to pay today and had been relying on the availability of their finance plan. She explained that all balances must be paid in full upon the time of surgery, and rather rudely. I looked all over her glass window to find evidence of such a decree, and they did have it written, though small and out of the way. Luckily, my grandmother called us back and took care of the balance (Love you, Mere!) so that I could be pain and cyst free.
After all of the drama, they finally call me back and get me situated. Almost immediately Dr. Hornung was ready to pump me full of drugs. Despite the earlier frustration, he was professional and calm. He told me a bad joke as he was putting me under and in about 10 seconds I was gone. The next thing I knew I was waking up in their comfy «recovery» chair, stuffed full of gauz, waiting for my mom to help me hobble out to the car.
I spent the next 5 days popping Percs, eating jello, and nursing my stitched mouth at my mom’s house. Never got dry socket, never pulled a stitch. 10 days after my surgery I went to have my stitches removed. Good as new! However, a week later my right bottom jaw got infected (probably due to a food particle or something) while I was still healing. Woke up in pain with a locked jaw on that following Saturday. I called Dr. Hornung at their Lowell office (which is open early on Saturdays) and got fit in right away. They cleaned it up and put me on a couple of antibiotics to be sure it cleared up for good. Since then there hasn’t been a problem!
Just make sure you do your research and make sure if they say they have a payment plan, that it’s legit. To the dental hygienists, don’t rattle your patients on the day of their surgery. What happened was a mistake, and I understand that, but don’t treat me like a child because you failed to inform your patients about a change in your policy.