New Information warning risks of Dental Tourism

Here (unfortunately only in German and most is about general medical tourism) are some other figures (also it does mention the 75% Irish figure).
Some German insurance companies did a study in 2004 and came to the result that 48% of the dental treatment outside Germany (mostly Eastern Europe) was faulty. A similar study in 2008 however found that the quality had vastly improved, especially for smaller, uncomplicated treatment and that the material now used was mostly the same that was used by German and Austrian dentists.

I agree big g, there would be little change if there was 100% reply. Still the level of response is not too bad for a postal survery, often that kind of study gets a very poor response and this is dealt with in the stats

Big_G wrote: »

The report states that the mean number of patients that each dentist reported seeing was 7. That is 3000 patients a year with problems. Whether it is a significant proportion or not it is a significant number.

Even this number means nothing, because the absolute numbers don't mean anything. If 3100 people whent for treatment abroad, 3000 means alot, while when 100,000 went abroad it means nothing.
The number also doesn't say what was wrong with them. It could just be that the bite was slightly wrong and the dentist just needed to adjust this or it could be that a full set of implants needed to be replaced.

The problem I have with these figures is that IDA tries to scaremonger by providing a number that looks huge, but doesn't mean anything.
What they should provide is a more accurate statistic of how many dental treatments went wrong and maybe a breakdown of the severity of the problems.

The IDA should rather educate people how to identify a good dentist (here or abroad) and what could go wrong with dental treatment and what potential problems are and why local treatment might be preferable to treatment further away (be it in Eastern Europe or something simple like someone from Cork going to a Dentis in Mayo). To try and scaremonger people into believing that all foreign treatment is bad and only an Irish dentist can treat you properly will people away, when they investigate it further and find that this is just not always true, but that you have good and bad dentists everywhere.

As I already said in a different thread, I know the problem Irish vs foreign dentists (in my case German dentists) from the other side. Ask 90% of all German expats living in Ireland about Irish dentists and they will tell you they would never go to any, not even if they are in severe pain, because they are so bad (allegedly, even a German dentist working in Ireland was saying this).

Big_G wrote: »

German dentists can think whatever they like and German patients. They are wrong. Irish dentists are good. Very good, for the most part.

Don't you see the similarities between this and what you are saying about foreign dentists?

Big_G wrote: »

All I can tell you is my own personal experience. All of my patients that have been abroad for treatment have had substandard treatment.

Its not scaremongering either. Its warning people of a potential risk.

It is scaremongering.
There are very good reasons to go to a dentist near you, rather than to one further away (being that going to a dentist in Eastern Europe or going to a dentist in Mayo if you live in Cork). Reasons like after treatments, easier possibilities to sue if something goes wrong, you're more likely to leave if you are not confortable with him, as you haven't already invested time and money to go to him, you speak the same language, etc. But these reasons are never mentioned by the IDA. Instead the same old argument is flogged of all foreign dentists are bad, only Irish dentists are good. It's easy for patients to look through this argument.

Big_G wrote: »

No, I do not. I am only criticising a particularly small subset of foreign dentists in Eastern Europe and Turkey mainly who treat patients with unnecessarily complex and unconservative treatment plans in excessively small amounts of time that result in long term and often irreversible damage to patients.

But that's what the IDA is saying. Read the article at the start of the threat. It says 75% of all dentist had to do re-work on work performed by a dentist abroad. Don't go to a dentist abroad, unless he is registered with the IDA, so that you can sue him easily. So basically it says, all dentists abroad are bad, unlike the Irish, which are all good.
That of course leaves the question open what is an Irish dentist? Someone who went to University in Ireland and got their training there? Then what about foreign students, studying in Ireland and going back there. Are they suddenly worse, just because they don't practice in Ireland and are not a member of the IDA?
And what about Irish (nationality) dentists having studied abroad and coming back as a full dentist, to work in Ireland? Are they Irish dentists and why are they better than students that have studied with them abroad, but practice in their country?

The problem with this sort of argument is that it is very easy, to look through it by the average person, and to see it as an argument to try and protect their vested interest.

Big_G wrote: »

German patients do not routinely travel to Ireland to have treatment. They do travel to Hungary and Turkey, though. Why don't you ask your German dentist friends what they think of Hungarian and Turkish dentistry? They will say the same thing that I am saying.

The main issue here is cost. People travel where it costs less. My point is this, there is a reason that it costs here. It's because it is better. It costs in Germany because it is better. It costs in the USA and Canada because it is better. It costs more in Japan. Anywhere you can think of where people travel from one place to another for treatment because of cost, the original place had higher quality treatment.

Higher cost doesn't necessary mean higher quality, especially not if you compare it accross countries.
Imagine you would take your practice, and all your stuff and would move to Eastern Europe. You would buy the same equipment again, you would use the same material as here and perform the same treatment as here. However, it would be much cheaper for the patients, because everything there is much cheaper than here. So your practice in Eastern Europe would not suddenly create subsyandard work, just because you charge less.
You might have a point if you compare within a country, but even then, this might not even be the case as you have to look at the set-up of the surgery and how they work.
If I compare my German dentist to my Irish one, who I would judge to be fairly equal quality wise, they have totally different set-ups of their surgeries. My German dentist has 3 treatment rooms and several assistants. So the first patient gets into the first treatment room, get's checked by the dentist, might get some sedation and has to wait. So in the meanwhile, the dentist gets to the next patient in room 2 and so on. He has also open late at some evenings. My Irish dentist at the other hand has only one treatment room and one assistant and only one patient at a time (I don;t think I can remember ever having seen any other patient in the waiting room at the same time as me. She only opens from 10:00 to around 17:00. So the Irish dentist will always be more expensive, because she sees less patients, but still need to cover her costs. The German dentist on the other hand will have seen much more patients at the same time and therefore can charge less. AL that by getting the same quality result and around the same effective consultation time (I know, the German dentist sounds rushed, but he never comes accross like this).

Big_G wrote: »

Anyway, Ireland is competing for price with the eastern europeans. The only thing we are not competitive on at the moment is implants. There is a reason. We pay more for our implants and we pass that cost on to the consumer.

In many cases, travelling is a false economy, not least because of travel costs, but often because of the necessity of remedial work costing many times what the original work cost.

I don't know how you can say that Ireland being competative in price with Eastern Europe? I looked into this before I got my treatment done here (several root canals, crowns and I looked into an implant, but not going ahead with it) and compared it with German prices and the Irish ones were way way off the German ones, so I can't realy think that they would compare much more favourable with Eastern European prices (or I just picked the most expensive dentists in Irieland ).

If the IDA really wants to get people to stay for treatment in Ireland and not go to Eastern Europe, they have to promote better reasons.
They have to say yes, there are good dentists in Eastern Europe, but there are also bad ones, the same as it is in Ireland and everywhere. If you are a good dentist, you normally don't need to advertise, because the patients are coming on their own. So if you see massive advertisements of a dentist, that might just be, because they are not the best. If you go to a foreign county, you most likely will relay on advertisement to find a dentist, as you don't have so many referrals from friends and family as you have in Ireland. Therefore the patient needs other criteria to decide if a dentist is good or not. To get these criteria, he would need to know, what would be best practice for a special treatment (which shouldn't vary too much between different countries, even Ireland and Eastern Europe). And he should know that the treatment needs time and that you can't just perform 5 implants with crowns and a whitning of the reminding teeth over a weekend.

However the IDA does not give this information (at least I can't see it), instead it always repeats don't go to foreign dentists, go to Irish ones because they are better.

I wouldn't go abroad for dental work as I just don't see how paying so little and having so little time to do pretty complex work will result in good treatment. I don't think its the lack of skill or standards thats the problem here its that they do so much in a short space of time. But I do wonder if the IDA decided to survey dentists asking them if they have had patients come to them after other Irish dentists had messed up. I would imagine it would be about the same.

Not going too much further in this debate, but just one last point.
How do you define Irish and foreign dentists?
By nationality, by where the work, by where they went to college?

georgieporgy wrote: »

You (and only you)introduced the term "foreign dentists" and used it in a few posts. How do you define it?

No, Big_G

Big_G wrote:

... criticising a particularly small subset of foreign dentists in Eastern Europe and Turkey...

used it and day dreamer as well

day dreamer wrote:

The IDA doesnt say that all foreign dentists are bad

To be fair, the IDA does distinguish between Irish dentists that are good and dentists abroad, which are bad.

So let me re=phrase my question.
What is an Irish dentist?

• a dentist born in Ireland
• a dentist with Irish parents
• a dentist with Irish citizenship
• a dentist who went to university in Ireland
• a dentist working in Ireland?

Some for a dentist abroad.
Is it

• a dentist not born in Ireland
• a dentist with non-Irish parents
• a dentist who has not Irish citizenship
• a dentist who went to university outsidide of Ireland
• a dentist working outside of Ireland?

Maci Rapping Penknife wrote: »

This thread is about a IDA press release about the dangers of DENTAL TOURISM. This is a specific term for patients that seeks complex crown, bridge and implant dentistry abroad to avail of lower costs in low cost economies such as eastern europe.

Dental tourism IMHO is not really going to belfast for a filling or single crown but going abroad to have multiple unit complex restorative work carried out. This type of work carries much greater risks as there are a lot of teeth involved. The implications of a bad job with this type work is tens of thousands of euros, much pain and inconvenience for a patient.

I fully agree with the last part of your quote, but the IDA is not putting this sort of information out to the patients.
Instead they have a dubious statistic, which implies that 75% of all dental work abroad is shoddy (in reality only 75% of the dentists who replied had at least one patient where they repaired dodgy work from abroad, that's why I would call the statistic dodgy).

Maci Rapping Penknife wrote: »

I dont really care where a dentist is from, if they are practicing in ireland and carrying out these treatment in ireland then its not dental tourism. If a dentist of any nationallity has a practice in ireland (not a consult in a hotel room in dublin and on a plane for 20 crowns in Budapest) then they are a irish dentist and hopefully are registered with the dental council of ireland and are held to the standards of any other irish dentist. They are covered as is the law by a professional insurance that a unhappy patient can get some recourse with.

And that's exactly why the aboce statistic is so easy to debunk. If a foreign dentist is allowed to work in Ireland (and I have seen some advertisment from Eastern European dentist) then they must meet Irish standards (I'm not sure how it works in Ireland, but I presume that it works similar to Germany, where you have to apply to be able to work as a dentist and they basically compare your degree to the standard German degree and if it judged equall, you can practice here). You probably could also assume that these dentist not all are the very best that country can produce, but are just normal dentists in their country (some might be excelent, some might be poor, but the majority is somewhere in the middle, just like all dentists in Ireland). If you think this is correct, you can never say that dentists from abroad are all bad, because if the normal dentist from e.g. Poland can come to practice in Ireland, the majority of dentists in Poland, who are of similar level would perform similar work as Irish dentists.
If you came to this conclusion, most people would just think that the warnings from the IDA are just done by money-grabbing dentists who don't want to loose their nice little earners.
So these people go to the web (because they might not have any references on who is a good dentist in Eastern Europe) and come across 10 advertisments who claim to do 10 implants and crowns over a weekend, they might think that this procedure is just normal, because they don't know any better and might think that these dentists in the advertisement are just normal dentists, when infact they might most likely be below standard dentists (as a good dentist doesn't need advertisement, as the patients are coming on their own).

Here is the point where the IDA would need to target the patients and say, look international best practice is to do implant by implantand crown by crown and leave some weeks in between each. THey might even go as far and produce a study about how many implants fail if they are done properly against how many implants fail if you do 10 in a weekend and load them imeaditly ith crowns.
That I think would convince peolpe more than a blatant Irish dentists are good, dentists abroad are bad.

Maci Rapping Penknife wrote: »

The IDA work to promote dentistry in ireland and to inform the public about dental issues, Dental tourism is a big issue and unfortunately the warning of the IDA are seen with some suspicion as can be seen on this thread. "Let not shoot the messenger". I applaud the IDA for carrying out this type of research and media campaign even though contrary to popular belief there is nothing in it of the irish dentist, only information for the irish dental patient.

I agree with the end result of the warning, better go to a local dentist then to one further away. I don't agree with the way the IDA tries to bring it accross.
Why are they not doing studies that show in a more detailed level what goes wrong in treatment abroad and what are the real figures. I would think that would convince more people to get their treatment in Ireland.
It would also benefit people who can't afford the treatment in Ireland (If you don't have insurance for dentsl treatment nor the money and you need extensive work done, you really only have the choice to not get it done at all and wait until your teet fall out and get some cheap dentures or try and see if you'll find a place where it can be done cheaper then in Ireland). Wouldn't it be better to empower these people to go abroad and get the treatment they need, but also giving them the tools to decide how it is done proberly. This might not be the 500 Euro treatment for 10 implants, ut it will definitely be cheaper then comparable work from a dentist in Ireland.

Excellent post george. This debate is a little pointless. Non dentists posting here are just trying to stir it up. Best of luck wherever you go.Though i'd be a lot more confident of work carried out in places like here, uk, canada than some of the dental tourism hot spots.I feel that for obvious reasons we're in a pretty good position to judge. There's nobody in budapest, prague etc who'll be putting you up in a hotel for a couple of fillings. As per a previous post when these horrors go wrong it's a specialist who has to clean up the mess.

The moderators and the dentists on the boards see the effects of over-treatment daily. No-one is saying that you can only get good dental work in Ireland.

We can only give an honest opinion on what we see. No-one can do a thorough examination and diagnosis for a poster on the boards only give their experiences and opinions on what they have seen in their dental surgeries.

Patients are may over-treated when they go abroad as they feel they need to get a lot of work done to make the trip worthwhile. Getting a large ammount of work done in a short period of time is almost always disasterous. If you want to discuss with other medical tourists about the best place to go there are other places for that but you cannot expect moderators and other dentists to support something that they know can cause many problems