Skip to content

Dentistry in foreign

So, a tooth came out, it’s at the front, something must be done. Standard Czech procedure is to craft a fake one and stick it to the ones around.

Called a “bridge” here. OK.

No insurance, not trying it on the State or anything. Total cost 700 korunna and change. Call it £20 plus a half pint or so.

This is for two visits, the taking of the cast, creation of the fake and the fitting. Most reasonable I thought. And certainly less than I think the NHS would try to charge me, if the NHS would even take me.

Hmm, perhaps we should be setting up something to make stag weekends actually stag 5 days? They get to get drunk and exercise the ferret etc and they also get their teeth done at the same time?

25 thoughts on “Dentistry in foreign”

  1. Theo

    I believe they do. When I was living in Budapest 26 years ago there used to be busloads of less well off Austrians visiting Hungarian dentists just over the border every day and the more affluent would make a weekend or week of it in Budapest using a more expensive dentist in the capital.

  2. No different in principle to the situation in the ’90s where you could drive your BMW to France, get it serviced by a franchised dealership, and have enough change from what a British dealership would charge you for a good weekend, and a boot load of cheap drink to take back.

  3. All the Poles I know here in the UK go home for dentistry for the same reason. The only problem with a Brit trying to do that is we don’t know who’s good and who’s a butcher, so yes, someone with local knowledge to sort out a good dentist and a decent hotel could have a nice little side earner.

  4. Budapest is famous for it – last time I was there, the hotel lobby had flyers for dentists in the space where most hotels put leaflets for local attractions.

  5. Forget the bridge, get an implant. I have two and they are fantastic. I saw billboards in Portugal and Spain a few weeks ago with dentists prepared to do one for about $US500.00 and up.

  6. I smashed the top off a molar a couple of years ago (on a bacon sandwich), my private/NHS** dentist reconstructed* it, £50.

    *put some sort of metal former tool around it and tamped down some sort of filler and shaped it to fit.

    **I’ve been with my dentist for more than 45 years since I was a little, and in all that time don’t know what the dentist/practice/patient relationship is. All I know is I have no idea what I’m going to do when she must soon inevitably retire.

  7. @Fred Z, November 10, 2016 at 6:25 pm
    “Forget the bridge, get an implant. I have two and they are fantastic.”

    +1

    Tim W,

    Front teeth – incisors & canines – have one root. Exercise care when biting to not tear the food as you will now be putting the shear forces on one tooth’s root, not two.

    Usually best to start implant procedure soon after extraction before bone erosion occurs.
    .

  8. Recently chose to go for the implant option (private only) rather than denture (NHS) or bridge (maybe only private), and opting to pay through the nose, so to speak, as I was wary of the “The only problem with a Brit trying to do that is we don’t know who’s good and who’s a butcher” concern. I similarly eschewed Chennai which is signifiactnly cheaper still.

  9. Bloke in Costa Rica

    I meet quite a few Yanks down here who are coming to get their teeth fixed for a quarter of what it would cost in the US. Dental care here is simply fabulous. Ticos have the best teeth I have ever seen.

  10. Not too far from where I live, across the border in Mexico, is quite possible the largest concentration of dentists in the world.

    Algodones, MX. You literally have to beat off touts with a stick. $15 cleanings at the lower end. Decent to good work too.

    They thrive on the winter tourist trade here.

    Its kind of funny – We get people coming down here from Canada to avoid the winter and while here they’ll pay cash in Mexico for dental care. Despite getting it ‘free’ (as in they already paid for it through their taxes) in Canada.

    That should alert Canadian dentists that there’s a problem with their service model.

  11. Bridges are a bit rubbish. I had one and it fell off every 6 months or so.

    I got implants in the UK at £1000 each. They’re a bit cheaper if you go abroad but you need repeated trips, weeks apart, so the multiple air fares and hotels cancel out the cost savings.

    As Pcar says, get them asap after extraction, otherwise the bone starts to waste away.

  12. Hey James
    I was thinking of doing this – how much time does it take from start to finish – for say 2 teeth replaced at the back and one wisdom removed? Could I squeeze it in to a 10-day vacation?

  13. Sort of off-topic but I believe you can keep your boat in a civic marina on the North coast of France, and make six or seven round trips by ferry each season to use it, and still pay less overall than you would in a marina on the South coast of England.

    Rip-off Britain they call it, for good reasons.

  14. @jgh: “*put some sort of metal former tool around it and tamped down some sort of filler and shaped it to fit.”

    That is called a “filling”.

  15. @Agammamon,

    Canada’s government-run health-care does not cover (most) dentistry. Instead, dental care is covered, with widely varying restrictions and copays, as a job benefit by some (but not all) employers.

    Retired folk will most likely need to pay for their dental work by themselves.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *