What was sold as “teeth in a day” turned into years of pain, broken dentures and, in one case, a desperate reach for Gorilla Glue, according to a growing stack of complaints against suburban implant specialist Dr. Paul Petrungaro.
Several Chicago-area patients say they paid tens of thousands of dollars for full-mouth implant work and never got the permanent teeth they were promised. Instead, they describe cycling through flimsy temporary dentures that cracked, fell apart, and made it hard to eat or work. Their stories have sparked criminal charges, civil lawsuits, and new questions about why state regulators did not act sooner, even as warnings piled up. The saga drew wider attention after a local TV investigation pulled together years of patient records and state disciplinary files.
Jenny, a cancer survivor who began treatment with Petrungaro in 2021, says she paid between $35,000 and $40,000 for a full-mouth reconstruction that never got past the temporary phase. She told FOX 32 Chicago that the makeshift teeth repeatedly broke and hurt so much that, at times, she reached for “superglue, Gorilla Glue” just to keep them in…