Ok, you’ve crossed the mental hurdle about going to another country like Costa Rica for your dental work. What’s the first thing you need to do? First, you need up-to-date x-rays.
If your x-rays are more than 4-6 months old, you need to go to your local dentist for new ones. The couple hundred dollars you spend there could make all the difference in getting the right dental care. Here is something most people don’t know. Dental x-rays are digital, and can be emailed. If your x-rays are current, all you need to do is call your local dentist and ask him to email them to you. You can then email them to your Costa Rican dentist for evaluation. Don’t be embarrassed to ask for them. You own them. You paid for them. They are yours.
If you submit x-rays that are not fairly recent, you are asking for trouble. A dentist looking at old x-rays is going to probably make an incorrect diagnosis because they are not an accurate picture of your current dental health. Dental decay does not stop and take a rest. A lot can happen in the time between taking dental x-rays when serious dental problems are at work. Dental decay is exponential. It is not something that maintains a slow, steady pace. Once decay and infection reaches a certain point, your dental problems will get exponentially worse!
Especially when you are working with a dentist in another country. He needs the latest, and best information to give you an accurate treatment plan. Your goal is to get the best estimation of the cost, and the time needed to complete the work. If your Costa Rican dentist makes a treatment plan for you based on incomplete and inaccurate information you sent him, then you are at fault. The last thing you want is to arrive in Costa Rica, go to your first consultation where they will take x-rays, only to find that your situation has changed for the worse in those months between x-rays being taken. More than likely, so will the cost and time needed to give you the dental work you need for a successful dental outcome. That is not a good surprise.
You do not want to buy airline tickets, take time off work or use precious vacation time, get a passport, and make prepaid lodging and car rental arrangements. Only to find that you sent old x-rays to your Costa Rican dentist, and therefore the treatment plan he made for you is not accurate! You will save thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars coming to Costa Rica to get your dental work done. Don’t sabotage a good dental outcome because you refuse to spend the $200 with your local dentist to get the current x-rays your Costa Rican dentist needs.
You need to ‘cross every ‘t’ and ‘dot every ‘i’ so that your Costa Rica dentist can give you the most complete and accurate treatment plan you need to make your dental tourism trip successful. That starts with current, up-to-date x-rays. Bad information results in expensive mistakes.
WRITTEN BY: Charles Drennard
