It has been a busy 2010 so far at Prisma Dental … so much so that the blog editor has not kept up with the comings and goings.
Tiffany passed on to us a collection of comments from patients in January:
From Liselotte, a Canadian:
Very efficient work performed by friendly and helpful staff. Highly recommended.
***
From Werner, also from Canada:
I have been to clinics in Switzerland and in Canada, however in this clinic it has been the best. Top notch quality and nice, gentle treatments.
Everybody is so nice and beautiful. I recommend this clinic highly.
***
From Ana Isabel, a native Costa Rican:
Infinitas gracias Doctora Telma por sus atenciones. Con su apoyo, empeño esfuerzo y mística no solo logra realizar los sueños de sus pacientes, si no tambien, usted y el Doctor Josef son un ejemplo para los jóvenes que están a su lado aprendiendo.
Como educadora sé que cualquiera sea nuestra profesion u oficio, debemos ejercerla con amor y disciplina y eso es lo que ustedes enseñan con su ejemplo. Que Dios la bendiga siempre en unión de su famila.
***
From Stuart in Florida:
Dr. Rubinstein,
As you know, Joshua had not had dental work done in many years due to the fact that he requires general anesthesia and there are a limited number of dentists who have access to an operating room or the willingness to work on people who have severe mental retardation. In addition, the cost is prohibitive here in the U.S.
I can´t thank you enough, not only for doing a great job on Joshua´s teeth but also for being so creative and flexible in accommodating us.
Didi Carr Reuben of California has been a patient of Prisma Dental and a friend of the dentists since she first visited Costa Rica more than a dozen years ago. Her smile is not one that anyone who met her would ever forget, and literally hundreds of patients have had cosmetic surgery and dentistry in Costa Rica based on Didi relating her own experiences. She has shepherded many patients from the United States to “the Beverly Hills of Central America and works for noted cosmetic surgeon Dr. Alejandro Lev.
Besides getting her dental work done at Prisma, Didi also comes in for permanent makeup work, and this video was taken while she was having her eyebrows touched up. Didi jokes at the end about “gas” — nitrous oxide, without which, she says, she’d never sit for dental work. But patients should know that pain management is a critical part of dentistry and it is very important to Drs. Rubinstein and Cordero — and the whole staff at Prisma — that patients be as comfortable as humanly possible while under their care.
I’ve only met Mark once, at his partner Melanie’s birthday party in New Jersey a few years back. (Note I’m not saying how old Melanie was, or is.) But I feel like I’ve known him a lot longer, maybe because I’ve known Melanie since high school and danced with her long before she ever met Mark. More than a year ago, Mark wrote me because he was interested in having major dental work done. You can see, in the photo at right, that he had evolved a “no teeth” smile over the years. People who need dental work do that. I fully empathized and didn’t hesitate to recommend my dentists in Costa Rica. That’s where Mark ended up going, in April 2008.
He had extensive work done, including six zirconium crowns. I got an email from him yesterday:
Now, more than a year later I’m as happy as ever with the work done at Prisma. I can only consider what a profound difference working with Telma has been in my life!
Here are before and after photos of Mark’s teeth and dental work. He had the aforementioned zirconium crowns but also had six root canals, gum surgery — the works.
Mark’s overall impression of Prisma was terrific, I’m happy to say. I would have had to answer to Melanie if I’d steered him wrong.
Prisma, especially Telma (Dr. Telma Rubinstein) is great. The equipment is state-of-the-art, the practice is very close, the on-site laboratory allowed for last-minute adjustments plus pre-fabrication evaluation. I loved the people and facility.
The work came out fantastic. I was very worried that I would look obvious…I was worried they would be too big, too white, too “perfect”. The end result was that people have told me they wouldn’t know they weren’t mine if I didn’t tell them and they look great.
My guess is I paid 25-35% of what the same work would have cost in the U.S.
We’ve added the first of what we expect will be a number of videos to the Prisma Dental Blog. This one features clips excerpted from a demo medical tourism video featuring Drs. Cordero and Rubinstein. Please note that this isn’t a finished video — but it lets you hear and see the dentists and a dental implant patient, Jill from Washington D.C.
The video was shot at the Prisma Dental Clinic in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Contributed by Mike, a Prisma patient from New York and Florida:
Most fellow happy “Prismatics” are aware that the Prisma building is located on a street that contains some of the nicer residences and buildings in San Jose but few of us are aware that just a short walk up this street is the Costa Rican President’s home — the casa of Nobel Laureate President Oscar Arias.
Although a wide plethora of international news sources, including newspapers, and all of the cable channels, as well as the American and local networks, are available in both English and Spanish, it is rare that such international notice and reportage involves events taking place in tiny Costa Rica.
Yet for the last several weeks the world’s attention has been focused on the drama taking place in that residence just up the street from Prisma where President Arias has been serving as a mediator, attempting to resolve the conflict between Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, ousted after attempting to extra-constitutionally attempting to alter the constitution, reportedly as a step toward becoming “President for Life” in emulation of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and the interim successor Honduran government.
If visitors to Prisma wish to view La Casa de Senior el Presidente Oscar Arias themselves the simply have to walk East a bit, and just past a vacant lot cleared for development they will come upon a corner white house with a flagpole sporting a large Costa Rican flag Bring your brand-new Prisma Smile, of course!
Below, the home of Costa Rican President Dr. Oscar Arias Sanchez, located in the same quiet area of San Jose as Prisma Dental. U.S. residents may be amused or astonished to know that Mrs. Arias often walks her dogs in the neighborhood. Costa Rica has no equivalent of the U.S. White House and, though the country provides offices for the president, he often prefers to work at home.
... 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.
