Dental work abroad

kalipix

Hi, I'm a Cork based student and considering getting just one implant and I'm willing to travel to Hungary or Poland to get it done. I've heard of dental practices offering relatively reasonable rates in Budapest.
Does anyone have any information or advice on this? I've done several online searches but reviews and experiences seem biased. I'm aware I can't get public recommendations on here so can someone please please pm me experiences or (non-biased) reviews?:o

Thank you in advance

Oral Surgeon

search boards, there is plenty of info here already....

kalipix

Not really, no. I need recommendations and to my knowledge, names of places aren't permitted to be posted publicly. Sorry, can no dentists respond to my post please:D

helimachoptor

Have a read of this
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056526627

Recommendations can be by PM, but at least go in with your eyes open

greensheep777

I'm not a dentist (or even close, I work in the tech sector), but I've considered treatment abroad (veneers instead of orthodontics).

Reasons I decided against it:

- The default treatment seems to be veneers/crowns. And not just one, a whole mouthful. Done within the space of a week. Veneers/crowns require your natural teeth to be drilled to basically stumps to apply them. Any dentist (including prosthodontists) I've ever been to has advised me against drilling into healthy teeth as a first resort, when things like bonding and orthodontics would be an option for me instead.
- Aforementioned treatment is done within days to accommodate your flights home, whereas from what I can tell a dentist here would space the work out over a period of months.
- If a dentist here destroys your mouth, you're resident here and they answer to the Dental Council and the Irish courts, who does a dentist in Hungary/Turkey/etc answer to when the patient lives in Ireland?
- If you have problems you can't just pop in after work to get them looked at, you have to pay for flights and hotels.
- You never hear the bad stories about foreign dental work. When people go off to Turkey or wherever they want to tell everyone all about the 10 veneers they got at a bargain price and how they outwitted the Irish dental system. They're not going to go telling everyone when it goes wrong.
- I've seen photos on this forum of work that has gone wrong and even I, as a non dentist, can see it's terrible. And it costs far more to fix than it would have to just get done here in the first place.

Buy cheap, buy twice, etc. If something sounds too good to be true....

Kaka86

Hi there ... I'm considering getting dental work done in Budapest with a company that are registered here in Ireland with the CRO and with the Irish Dental Association - past patients of the same company have featured on Irish shows talking about their experience so all seems above abroad. The work I am getting done is crowns and fillings no implants ... so all would be done in one 5 day drip. I'm just wondering what the downfalls/negative of doing this ??? TIA

uck51js9zml2yt

Kaka86 wrote: »

Hi there ... I'm considering getting dental work done in Budapest with a company that are registered here in Ireland with the CRO and with the Irish Dental Association - past patients of the same company have featured on Irish shows talking about their experience so all seems above abroad. The work I am getting done is crowns and fillings no implants ... so all would be done in one 5 day drip. I'm just wondering what the downfalls/negative of doing this ??? TIA

Put it this way.... I had to get a root canal that was done 17 years ago redone in the past few weeks.
I looked at getting it done up North but it would have been pick a name and hope for the best.
I decided on going with a recommendation in Dublin. 1 root canal was done over a period of 6 weeks. I've a follow up visit but in 6 months but can go back to him if there are any issues, anytime.

My wife got a crown done in her home country for a quarter the end cost of here...she was in school with the dental nurse, was home for 7 weeks and could speak to him in her own language.
I hope the similarities aren't lost on you!

ohnonotgmail

Kaka86 wrote: »

Hi there ... I'm considering getting dental work done in Budapest with a company that are registered here in Ireland with the CRO and with the Irish Dental Association - past patients of the same company have featured on Irish shows talking about their experience so all seems above abroad. The work I am getting done is crowns and fillings no implants ... so all would be done in one 5 day drip. I'm just wondering what the downfalls/negative of doing this ??? TIA

Not by any chance the same clinic that used pictures of work done by other dentists, including a dentist on this board, as part of their advertising? They have a female spokesperson with an annoying voice.

btkm8unsl0w5r4

Kaka86 wrote: »

The work I am getting done is crowns and fillings no implants ... so all would be done in one 5 day drip. I'm just wondering what the downfalls/negative of doing this ??? TIA

I think you have hit upon the issue already, complex dental work cannot be done correctly in short periods of time at super low costs.

If it could we would all save ourselves the time and do it that way.
The crowns will be cemented regardless of how well they fit or how they looks because there is not time to correct issues, and no time to allow things to heal. Even the most excellent dentists and lab technicians achieve consistently disappointingly mediocre results (at best) when under those sort of pressures. Treatment plan are chosen based on their profitability and speed rather than the correct thing for each patient.

At the end of the day, the decision is already made. Looking for confirmation and reassurance (non biased reviews are the reviews that suit you, biased reviews are ones that do not suit you) is understandable, but you already know that you are trading low cost for uncertainty and questionable outcome.

Another persons experiance is not directly translatable to you unfortunately. You would need an expert with special dental knowledge who sees dozens or hundreds of patients who have had this done and ask them for their opinion.

Its unfortunate that the very patients that seek out this type of dental work are not best positioned to carry out remedial work should it be needed.

I do honestly wish you all the best of luck. I am a dentist BTW so you have to factor in my 20 years of experiance bias in this matter. I acknowledge that you can get a bad job done anywhere....I do notice that the usual culprits all seem to sing the same song, and when you know what to listen for the warning signs are obvious:

low low cost,
volume discounts,
high speed treatment,
use of shills,
Generally the dentists is part of the machine and is unnamed.
large media budget,
no talk of quality, no acknowledgement that different dentists achieve different results,
no talk of the necessity for healing time,
lot of talk of other clinics prices,
incredible warranties,
use of third party sales people or reps,
inflation of their staffs qualifications,
highlighting basic registration requirements as if they are special,
overuse of brand names and dental material names to somehow infer quality.
Odd overemphasis on the number of patients they treat.
Huge emphasis on the machines they have purchased to infer quality
Little talk of the inherent risks or treatment.
Little talk of the long term relationship needed for maintenance of dental work.
Over simplification of complex dental procedures.

Makood

Kaka86 wrote: »

Hi there ... I'm considering getting dental work done in Budapest with a company that are registered here in Ireland with the CRO and with the Irish Dental Association - past patients of the same company have featured on Irish shows talking about their experience so all seems above abroad. The work I am getting done is crowns and fillings no implants ... so all would be done in one 5 day drip. I'm just wondering what the downfalls/negative of doing this ??? TIA

I've had a lot of work done abroad, but not in a short space of time. I doubt much can go wrong with fillings, but RCT and crowns.. be very careful of especially if done in a few days.
Are the crowns necessary? I had a quote from a Hungarian dentist where pretty much everything was being crowned or veneered or something. I needed one.

Forgot to add I didn't go to Hungary - I went to clinics recommended by my wife.