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Attracted by the promise of a perfect smile at an unbeatable price, between 150,000 and 250,000 foreign patients go to Turkey each year.

 

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Briton Rida Azeem realised her dental trip to Turkey had gone wrong when she removed her mask. "My husband said: 'What have they done to you? Your face looks all distorted', she recalls.

"I had big holes under my gums and you could see the metal bits (of the implants). It was so badly done that it was incredible", says this engineer from Manchester.

"Originally they were going to do five implants", says Azeem. But when the treatment was about to start, the dentists told her they were going to "remove all her teeth". "They seemed professional", says the 42-year-old woman, who now wears a denture."

"Attracted by the promise of a perfect smile at an unbeatable price, between 150,000 and 250,000 foreign patients go to Turkey each year, according to the Turkish Dentists Association

 

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The country is one of the main destinations for dental tourism in the world, along with Hungary, Thailand and Dubai.
But this 'Hollywood smile' sold by clinics in Istanbul, Izmir or Antalya often involves cutting or even extracting healthy teeth, or even removing them all.
'Many dental clinics in Turkey treat teeth that do not need treatment', says the head of a clinic in Istanbul, who does not wish to be identified.
'They put veneers on teeth that only need bleaching, sometimes even the whole crown', he explains.
Like the British Azeem, the Belgian Alana Boone suffers from severe complications after dental treatment carried out in Antalya in July 2021.
At first, the 28 crowns that were put on seemed fine, but only on the surface. They were 'placed too deep. Now I have inflammations and daily pain', laments the 23-year-old.
'The only solution would be to remove it all, but the dentists say they don't know what they will find', she says.
The French nurse Marie also went to a Turkish dentist to improve her lower teeth and boost her confidence after a separation. 'I wanted to see myself as more attractive', she explains. But the dentist convinced her to get crowns on the top teeth as well.
'After a month, the problems started: the teeth started to move and food started to get stuck between them. My breath was so bad that mouthwash' didn't help, says the forty-something.'
The risk of low costs
The British Dental Association warned of the 'considerable risk of low-cost treatments' abroad, with the danger of 'crowns that don't fit and implants that fall out'.
'Cutting a healthy tooth to put a crown on is mutilation. In France, you'll be locked up for that', said Patrick Solera of the French Dentists' Union, outraged.
But Tarik Ismen of the Turkish Dental Association assures that his professionals only respond to patients' need to look like 'Hollywood stars and have a dazzling smile

 

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If Turkish dentists don't do it, Albanian or Polish dentists will", he says.

According to him, a proportion of 3-5% of botched surgeries "is acceptable". "It can happen anywhere", he adds. The reality is that in Turkey and in countries in the east, this figure reaches up to 30% of surgeries with a risk to health.

"Turkish dentists are the best and cheapest in the world", says Turker Sandalli, pioneer of dental tourism in Turkey 20 years ago. In his clinic, "not a single tooth has been extracted in the past 12 years", he claims.

"But, and it saddens me to say this, 90% of Turkish clinics bet on cheap dentistry", he qualifies.

Berna Aytac, head of the Istanbul Dentists' Chamber, accuses health tourism agencies of "encouraging a lower quality of care". There are over 450 health tourism agencies registered with the Turkish Ministry of Health, which typically offer travel, accommodation, and treatment packages to their clients.

The AFP discovered that some use misleading material to attract patients, such as presenting photographs of people with radiant smiles from image banks as if they were their clients.

For the victims, seeking legal recourse is costly and compensation, meagre. Moreover, dentists in their home countries "refuse" to treat them "because then they become responsible", explains Frenchman Patrick Solera.

Just to repair the damage, Rida Azeem and Alana Boone received a quote of 30,000 dollars, three or four times more than the treatment paid in Turkey.

After persistent efforts, the British engineer managed to recover 3,000 dollars from the Istanbul clinic that disfigured her face. The dentist offered to treat her if she returned, but she was "very scared", she explains.

The head of the Istanbul Dentists' Chamber says she still believes in medical tourism, but she is concerned about the number of students who want to enter the profession.

Since 2010, the number of dental faculties in Turkey has risen from 35 to 104. "We are creating future unemployed dentists", says Aytac. "And if they don't find work, some unfortunately won't care about ethics".

 

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