Well, of course Demi Moore goes to the dentist. She’s just like everyone else, right?
Besides being a movie star and married to Ashton Kutcher, that is. This week, Moore posted photos showing her in the dentist chair, minus a front tooth, and posted to her Twitter account (She goes by mrskutcher, there, and has more than a million “followers”) about her temporary new look (see photo.)
She’s missing tooth No. 8. The actress joked on her page, “Happy to share and always appreciate the opportunity to find humility!!! Or at least be able to laugh at myself!”
We hope and trust that she had a great dentist, and want to let her know she and Ashton would be very welcome to stop in for a checkup at Prisma Dental the next time they are in Costa Rica! We’d love to see her “after” picture with her new No. 8 tooth, but there will surely be plenty of those. Pictures, that is.
Jill, from Washington, D.C., recently had crowns, some extractions and a dental prosthesis at Prisma Dental. She writes:
All is well here and I can’t stop smiling! Friends are amazed at how I became a whole new person, which is exactly how I feel.
Love and kisses to everyone, I’ll stay in touch if I have any questions and please stay in touch, too.
Here are her “before and after” photos:
She plans to visit Prisma again in January, if not before. Jill’s a great example of how great dental work and a new smile can be literally life-changing.
Domestic healthcare costs are expected to increase to an estimated 21 percent of gross domestic product by 2010.
Gallup did not ask specifically about dental care or destinations. The poll indicated that U.S. residents on the east and west coasts are more accepting of the possibility of medical travel than those in the midwest or south.
Costa Rica surgeons and dentists pioneered medical and dental tourism beginning in the late 1970s and the country remains a prime destination for medical, dental and cosmetic surgery patients from the U.S. Prisma Dental has been serving patients from the U.S. for two generations.
Editor’s Note: One of the things that really made me relax about going to Costa Rica for dental work instead of having it done at home in Connecticut or New York was realizing that the dentists at Prisma were handling 300 or more cases like mine every year, as compared to a handful, perhaps, for my local dentist. Here’s a letter we got yesterday from Peter, a dental patient from New Hampshire. Click on his before and after photos to see larger versions.
Here’s Peter’s story:
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.
We want to applaud the dental students and volunteer dentists at Orlando Tech who are providing affordable dental care for patients below the poverty line in Florida. Their work was featured on Fox Channel 35 out of Orlando this week:
However, the clinic is only able to provide basic services for those who are 200 percent below the poverty line and they do not do bridges, crowns, implants, etc. It is wonderful that the poorest can get basic care — something they cannot get everywhere in the United States. But in difficult times, even those of moderate means have difficulty affording good dental care. At Prisma Dental, we see many Floridians who cannot afford major and necessary dental work at home. If that is your situation, we urge you to contact us.
... to Prisma Dental in San Jose, Costa Rica, where we have been privileged to deliver world-class dental care to literally thousands of patients from around the world for the past 18 years. We specialize in whole-mouth reconstruction, cosmetic and holistic general dentistry and oral surgery.
