Full Mouth Reconstruction: Peter from New Hampshire

Full Mouth Reconstruction: Peter from New Hampshire

Sometimes it is better to let a patient speak for your work.  Such is the case with Peter.  After visiting our office in Costa Rica we received this letter from Peter:

My dental work was done at Prisma Dental in San Jose, Costa Rica.

My teeth had always been pretty bad (I’m a Brit, what would you expect?) and got to the point where I was having fillings replaced every few months and my front lower teeth were worn down to about 1/8″ and showing the brown dentine.

Basically — I was like an old horse. Replacing the worn-down teeth with taller ones would affect every other tooth because they would no longer meet. I spent a year going to several dentists at home but no one had a solution I could afford. We researched dental tourism and found that Costa Rica is one of the top three destinations. An e-book called Patients Beyond Borders, mentioned in an AARP magazine, said that Prisma was “la creme de la creme” of dental clinics so I went there. It was the most impressive dental clinic I have ever seen, and they gave us a tour of the facilities which included their own labs for making crowns and specialist rooms for such as root canal work.

I had every tooth in my head crowned. The process included 18 root canals. This was in February of 2008 and so far I have not had any trouble, and it is a joy to be able to smile without scaring children. All the dentists in the U.S. seemed to find complications, whatever procedure they proposed. I felt that my dental problems were worse than anyone had ever had. At Prisma they just regarded it as routine and got on with it. This is possibly a downside of having treatment there. You need to be aware that they will go ahead so fast it might make your head spin. I’m not suggesting that they are anything but correct and proper in giving you the best possible modern treatment, just that compared to here they don’t pussyfoot around.

Here, I would probably have had one or two teeth worked on per day, with rest days in between. Believe it or not, all of my work was completed in three days. Ten days later I went back to have the final crowns cemented in place. It was a bit grueling, 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. the first day, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. the second day, four hours on the third day and all was done. This would probably have been different if I was a resident instead of being there for a limited period. Several dentists worked on me according to their specialties; When one was done another came in.

I could not be more impressed by their professionalism and efficiency. This all sounds like a commercial, but it is what I think and what I tell everyone, and I have been to a lot of dentists in my life.

— Peter, New Hampshire