'Life-altering side effects': when medical and cosmetic treatments abroad go wrong

• Published date: 24 June 2023
• Author: Nathan Johns
• Publication title: Irish Times: Web Edition Articles (Dublin, Ireland)

Two people died in 2021 and four in 2022, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), which is aware of the case of a seventh person, a man, who died in Turkey during a dental procedure just last month

Separately, it is understood that another Irish person, a woman, who travelled to Turkey for a dental procedure has also recently died, but the precise cause of death remains unknown.

Sources in the Health Service Executive (HSE) are concerned that the actual number of deaths is probably higher, since not every death abroad has to be reported to the DFA.

The phenomenon of travelling abroad for treatment is sometimes referred to as medical tourism.

Dr Will Rymer, chair of the National GP Committee at the Irish Dental Association, is a practising dentist in Roscrea, Co Tipperary. He reports treating on average two patients a month presenting with complications having travelled abroad for dental work.

"The Irish Dental Association carried out a survey in 2018 where 74 per cent of Irish dentists reported having to deal with problems post-dental tourism," Dr Rymer says. "They wouldn't be as significant as the most recent case [of the man who died last month].

"Generally what's happening is you're having patients presenting to us having had extremely aggressive dentistry done. I might see a patient for a routine treatment, I might recommend to have a small filling, maybe a cleaning and if they're interested in cosmetics you might offer a bit of tooth-whitening. At their six-month review, they come back having been away and they've had a block of porcelain crowns fitted across all of their teeth, they're all fused together, they're poor quality.

"Because two teeth are fused together, the entire smile is now dependent on every tooth being healthy. So if they get a problem with one tooth, we have to dismantle the entire smile. You go from a case where their mouth was a six out of 10, they'd have liked to go to an eight out of 10 but in reality they ended up with a one out of 10, they just didn't realise it for a couple of years.

"I had a young chap, in his 30s, he had quite aggressive gum disease for a very young person. Apparently he had gone to see a friend in Turkey and his friend fit him with full porcelain crowns, his teeth were all fused together, which massively accelerated his gum problem.

"Over the course of two years we've dismantled it to the point we've fitted him with full dentures. It's a huge deterioration in his oral health, something that could have been avoided with intensive, specialist gum care."

According to Dr Rymer, in the past the primary motivation behind dental tourism was the lower cost in countries such as Turkey. However, he says that a range of other factors are now at...