Dental Tourism

Let me show you this picture. This patient flew overseas to get a dental implant placed. And can you look at this screw? That's a screw from Home Depot. This is a photo that I saw from a Facebook group that I'm a part of for American dentists. And unfortunately, I've seen this type of thing as well in my own dental practice from patients who have gone overseas to get dental work done. "Why can't I go to Mexico to get my dental implant placed? I heard it's cheaper." A patient asked me this question a few days ago, and I was really curious. I did understand why she would ask this. Dentists outside of America, for places such as Mexico and other places like that, do offer cheaper prices. And they do claim that they had the same dental knowledge and experience as most trained surgeons in America. There are three main reasons why patients should not fly out of America to get their dental implant placed. Number one is that the surgeon will not be available if something goes wrong when you get back. There's been many cases along the years that I've seen patients of mine that have gone abroad and had dental procedures done. Some, several months ago, and in some cases, a couple of years ago, and then they come back and now they're having a problem. And that gets us in a bind because we don't know what kind of dental implant that was placed. Sometimes it was placed incorrectly. It's much more difficult to correct something like that. And in some cases, we don't even have the parts for that dental implant that was placed because they don't make that in most locations. It's is very site-specific, location-specific. This can be both costly and very inconvenient for this patient. Number two is no dental financing. Yes, dentistry is definitely cheaper in Mexico than in America. They advertise it that way because there's no reliable dental financing outside of America for these patients to go to, to get the dental work done. So that's why they go abroad because it's a lot cheaper. CareCredit, for example, is not accepted in Mexico. All the dentistry that is done in Mexico must be paid in full there. In America, there's usually financing options available, and there's installment plans available, and so patients sometimes don't realize this. And they think that dentistry is always expensive or dental implants are expensive, and they want to go and get that dental implant placed thinking that they're going to save money, and in reality, they actually may be spending a lot more money having it redone and replaced again by a U.S. dentist that's trained in doing dental implants. Number three is also very important, is that there is no legal recourse that is or can be taken. When a patient goes to Mexico, for example, or abroad and has a dental implant placed, and if something goes wrong, there's no way to either maybe get refund or get something back to have it redone again in America, if something does fail. This, in my opinion, is the biggest red flag. If something does go wrong, the patient is really out of luck in what to do. To be clear, I'm not saying that all dentists in Mexico, for example, are dishonest or not qualified to place dental implants. I'm sure there are very good ones in there and they're very reputable. I'm just talking about my own experience and from what I've heard from other dentists as well. There's also no way for us to see what kind of dental implant that was used. What kind of type of dental implant. There's different grades and quality of dental implants being used around the world, and the ones that we place here in America are usually one of the highest qualities, especially in our office, that can be placed. That does increase the success rate for our patients. I hope this video has helped some patients knowing about the risks of having dental implants placed abroad. And I know why patients ask this question to me and other doctors is usually because of the price. Ultimately, the dental implant that's being placed should fit within their budget. This is why at our dental office we do offer financial options for our patients, such as institutions such as CareCredit or LendingClub. And we competitively price our dental implants at $2,100 for everything, which includes the implant itself, the abutment, and the crown. We help our patients get the best care possible at an affordable price right here in the U.S. I hope you got some valuable information. If you like this, please share it with your friends. This is Dr. Sasan Khodabakhsh with Summit Point Dental Implant Center.