What Are the Pros and Cons of a Dental Holiday or Tourism?

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What Are the Pros and Cons of a Dental Holiday or Tourism?

Thinking about a dental holiday in Thailand? Make sure you watch this before making any bookings!

Hi Dr Warren here from Lifestyle Smiles, I caught up with my some high school friends over the weekend, and one of the girls is thinking about going to Thailand for a holiday, plus getting her teeth done at the same time and ask my opinions. So I thought I’ll make a video sharing with you what I shared with her just in case you are thinking of the same thing.

Being a cosmetic dentist here in Melbourne, surprisingly, we actually fix a lot of cases from these dental holidays, so let me take you through the pros and cons of a dental holiday.

"Free" Holiday

What are the pros? It’s a very interesting question because I guess the obvious answer is, with a dental holiday you can go to a different country, have your teeth done, enjoy the scenery, enjoy the food and enjoy the culture. You can have fun and have your teeth fixed for the same price of doing your teeth in Australia. So why not? I guess that the biggest advantage of dental tourism, it seems like the Holiday is “Free”.

Quality of Work Around the World Is Different

In terms of quality of work. Let’s be honest, there are great dentists throughout the world. I’ve seen some great work overseas, but unfortunately, a lot more, have come back, with issues. You see in every country, the infection control, and the quality control of dental surgeries are different.

Sometimes you can do all the due diligence in the whole world, but you just don’t know what you don’t know. One thing is for sure, just the same as it’s very hard to find a really good accountant or a really good lawyer, finding a really good dentist that you can trust, is no different.

Patient's Habits

Now, the real issue I have with patients seeing a dentist overseas comes from the patients themselves. You see, these type of patients usually require a lot of dental work and as a dentist, I’m concerned from the very outset because there are reasons why their teeth have deteriorated the way they have.

A lot can be potentially attributed to the way they look after their teeth, their diet, their habits, their oral hygiene routines or the lack of it, their immune system and many, many other factors. As a dentist, if we don’t successfully control these risk factors and rush in to fix all the teeth within a few days, what are your chances of long term success?

Time Availability

The other issue is time. Sometimes to successfully rebuild someone’s teeth, it takes months and months of hard work. Hard work both from the patients and their dentists, as a team, that’s how we succeed. There is no secret to long term health and dental stability.

If I take your teeth out today, your bone will not heal in 1 day. So if you try to rush things and take short cuts to complete the treatment in a just few days because you have a flight to catch next week. What are your chances of long term success?

Dentist Follow-Up

Another problem, follow up is almost as crucial as the treatment itself, like for example taking out a tooth, as a dentist, I perform a complimentary follow-up appointment in a week to see if things are healing properly. If you never come back again, how can the dentist follow up? How can the dentist pick up if something is wrong, and fix it in time before it becomes a catastrophe?

Costs to Fix It

And let me tell you when something goes wrong, often the cost of fixing the job would be 3-4 times more than doing it properly in the first place.

So you see, by having a free holiday, in the long term, your teeth may fail again because of a lack of care, a lack of communication, a lack of education and a lack of follow up. And financially you could be much worse off. So regardless of where you are, finding a local trustworthy dentist that can look after you is, in my opinion, still the way to go because they know you will be back if something goes wrong and they’ll be able to look after you the way they look after their family.

So I hope this video gave you a few things to consider if you are thinking about a dental holiday. If you are looking at upgrading your smile, we do have a complimentary smile consultation, why don’t you direct message us on social media, call us on (03) 9593-1811, or fill in the enquiry form on our website, and we will be in touch to organise a time for you.

See you at the next video!

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Services we mentioned:

Cosmetic Dentistry

General Dental Health Examination and Hygiene

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Dr Warren Antonoff is the best dentist we’ve ever worked with, the clinic is clean with friendly staff. Waiting time was short, and the care taken into his work is top-notch. Will be using Lifestyle Smiles for the years to come.

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Great experience! Dr Warren is a great dentist who is gentle and really experienced. He has a great bedside manner that puts patients at ease!

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