Almost 2,000 people in Bristol had teeth removed last year – almost 50 per cent up on the previous 12 months.

Records released in Parliament showed that 1,825 people needed to have teeth removed under general anaesthetic compared to 1,222 who underwent the procedure in 2007.

The rise was reflected across the region with South Gloucestershire going up by 36 per cent to 830, Bath and North East Somerset recording an 18 per cent increase to 558 and North Somerset increasing by 41 per cent to 652.

The Liberal Democrats seized on the statistics as evidence that patients who found it increasingly difficult to see a dentist under the new NHS contract were ignoring minor problems until hospital treatment was needed.

Norman Lamb, the party's health spokesman, said: "This extraordinary number of people needing their teeth extracted under general anaesthetic could well be the result of the appalling access to NHS dentistry.

"The dental contract was supposedly designed to improve the situation, but the staggering rise in tooth extractions proves the massive failures of this botched initiative.

"The crisis in NHS dentistry is one of this Government's most shameful legacies."

However a spokeswoman for Bristol PCT insisted the problem was not caused by a lack of NHS dentists.

She added: "In Bristol we started a special dental clinic for "hard to reach" groups at City Gate Walk In Centre in 2007. Bristol has a specialist dental hospital nearby which complex cases have been able to be referred to rather than having to travel to a hospital some distance away, which means that it more likely that people from hard to reach groups will continue to go on to actually have their treatment.

"Hard to reach groups include, homeless, substance misusers etc. We also think that our monitoring and figures have improved recently.

"We have spent more than £1million on improving access, and equality of access, to NHS dental services since the dental contract came in 2006."