EIGHTY-six-year-old Audrey Stones has been existing on a liquid diet for four months after her false teeth went missing in hospital last October.

Her appalled daughter contacted The Bolton News to make a desperate appeal for a dentist to come and fit her mother with new dentures — she said her pleas for help were falling on deaf ears in hospital, where her mum is still being treated.

To make matters worse, around two months ago someone else’s false teeth were left on Mrs Stones' bedside which she ended up putting in, before realising the set did not belong to her.

But when the paper stepped in this week, the hospital finally contacted the family to say action would at last be taken to get Mrs Stones a new set of teeth.

Mrs Stones, from Bromley Cross, has been in the Royal Bolton Hospital since last August — apart from a short spell at home — after developing problems with her leg. Her dentures went missing after being left on the dinner tray in October and the family say were not allowed to go and look for them in the kitchens.

Yvonne Moller, who lives in Bolton, says she has been looking for a dentist after she was told the hospital dentist would not be able to help.

Mrs Moller said: “She is struggling to break her food down, resulting in a lack of nutrition. My mum is very poorly and bed bound.

“I have spoken to various officials within the hospital who make promises to me and then the buck is simply passed on to someone else. They seemed at a loss to what to do. After four months they said they can’t get a dentist to come to the hospital to take a dentures mould.

“My mother asked me on Saturday to give her the numbers of taxis so she could go to the dentist herself.”

Mrs Moller said eating well was vital to help her mum’s recovery.

She added: “Mum keeps asking me why she hasn’t got her teeth and why have I not done anything about it?”

Mrs Moller said she was heartbroken seeing her mum like that and felt the family had been let down by the hospital.

She said: “There are people going to the moon! They surely can replace some teeth!

“They have put her on a special diet of puréed food. She doesn’t like this food. I do take food in but have to watch closely to make sure she manages to swallow it. It’s pitiful. To my horror, some teeth did turn up and my mum had been using them but I know they don’t belong to her.”

This week The Bolton News made contact with the hospital. And on the same day Mrs Moller was contacted by them. She said: “It’s amazing what has happened, I just feel annoyed I hadn’t contacted the paper sooner.”

A spokesman for The Royal Bolton Hospital said:”Whilst the hospital does not provide this type of specialist denture replacement service, in cases where a person is in hospital and there is a requirement for replacement of a person’s dentures, we will contact local dentist services to try and support a replacement during admission. In this instance none of the dentists we contacted initially were able to facilitate an assessment at the hospital, however we now have agreement that a local dental laboratory who will come out so the situation has been resolved and Mrs Stokes and her daughter are happy with that."