Curry O'Day · 1 out of 5 stars · 3 months ago
Now that I am firmly established with a new dentist I feel like my long, terrible nightmare with Gustavo Coutin is finally over and I can warn everyone on Google to steer as far away from his wretched practice as possible. Coutin has the worst bedside manner of any medical professional I have ever encountered. He is rude, snotty, arrogant, and completely unsympathetic toward his patients. When I initially saw him with a broken tooth he said "what do you want me to do about it?" Talk about first impressions! As I speculated about possible courses of action he said, "well you can keep treating it yourself if you'd like." They demanded my credit card while I was still in the examination chair awaiting treatment. There were so many times I was utterly taken aback by the nerve of this arrogant, mean-spirited man that it got to the point where I so dreaded going to see him I would nearly have a panic attack in his waiting room. He makes no effort to schedule routine cleanings or remind patients when they are due. When I did see him for a cleaning I had to ask him to look at my x-rays, which he pretended to do for a moment and then sent me packing. Not long after that I had another tooth break, this time just a few days before I left on a trip abroad, and he laughed at my situation and ridiculed me for not coming in sooner for a checkup even though he never scheduled one and had obviously overlooked the problematic tooth before. The temporary crown he put in place fell apart on the plane and I spent the entire three-week trip chewing on one side of my mouth. Coutin works completely alone--no hygienist, no assistants...in fact, there were times when we were the only two souls in his office, so if there had been an emergency no one would have been there to assist. He does root canal treatments himself the old fashioned way--I had to get one retreated just over a year after he did it and my new endodontist was astonished at how poor of a job he did and the shoddy materials he used (after clearing the subsequent decay they said this tooth will almost certainly fail because there is so little material left). Coutin doesn't wear a mask, so while he works on you you either have to close your eyes or stare into his nostrils. I saw Coutin for two years and he never once filled a single cavity. When I finally got set up with my new dentist he had to put together a treatment plan to address 11 cavities that Coutin had neglected. Coutin is bilingual and accepts HMO insurance so it's pretty clear that he preys on low-income and immigrant communities who have no other option, and he cuts corners to increase his margins. I now drive to a neighboring parish and would drive three states over were it necessary to avoid Coutin's practice. I could go on because there are numerous other examples of his malpractice, miserable demeanor, and total lack of ethics, but hopefully that will suffice to convince you to go literally anywhere else for dentistry.
