Millions of Brits are waiting for NHS dental care – more may turn to countries like Turkey
We’re sitting in the waiting room of one of two Istanbul clinics belonging to Turkish dental practitioners Dentakay. Having seen the TikTok horror stories, I’m expecting dingy rooms, dark corridors and sullen staff, but the Nish Clinic has gleaming marble floor tiles, white walls and staff clad in spotless uniforms.
Still, I’m nervous. I’m a coward when it comes to teeth – blame childhood memories: the dentist who performed a painful extraction by tying a piece of string from my tooth to a door handle, and then slamming the door shut, or the one who anaesthetised me using sickly-sweet, vanilla-scented gas that gave me nightmares.
And the concerning stories about Turkey abound, with countless Britons travelling to the country for cheap dental work ending up with even more serious problems with their teeth.
Yet despite the appalling accounts of procedures gone wrong, the visitors keep coming. With millions of people on NHS waiting lists in the UK, and the vast expense of private treatment, dental tourism is on the rise. The Turkish Dental Association reports that some 250,000 tourists travel to Turkey for dental work each year.
I speak to Lydia, who says the bridge she had fitted over her teeth after travelling from the UK to Turkey for dental work crunched and moved when she ate.
“In the UK they discovered the screws to the implants were loose and the bottom crowns – which were a block of six – were ill-fitting and had to be redone with singular crowns,” she says. The corrective work cost £5,500.
Eric Millen, a 42-year-old from Toronto, tells The i Paper he suffered complications after treatment at an Antalya clinic.
“I was expecting a dream smile, instead was given a denture-style prosthesis that covers my gums,” he said. “It felt bulky and foreign in my mouth. It altered my speech, it’s extremely difficult to clean, and has already led to inflammation and other complications.”
He has since created a website detailing his botched treatment to warn others away from the clinic he visited.
A report by Tech platform Rentech Digital found that there were more 5,700 dental clinics in Turkey, with more than a third in Istanbul. While they are overseen by the ministry of health and the Turkish dental association, the country’s dental clinics are not subject to the strict regulations applied in many other countries, which means that standards vary wildly.
So how to find the reputable ones? After careful research, I alight upon Dentakay, opened by Dr Gulay Akay with her businessman husband Onur in 2009. They now have six clinics in Turkey, one in Mexico, one in Saudi Arabia, and a consultation clinic in the UK – where they offer all-inclusive packages with flights, accommodation and local transport included.
Dr Akay tells The i Paper that around 60 per cent of her clients are British.
“Last year, Dentakay treated some 7,000 patients from the UK,” she says.
According to recent figures released by the British Dental Association, some 12 million adults in England are unable to access necessary dental care, and approximately 10 million people are on waiting lists for routine treatment. With many more seeking cosmetic work in the hopes of buying the Hollywood smile popularised by A-listers and Love Island stars, treatment abroad remains an enticing option.
“I had a buried tooth,” said Terence Ferguson. “My dentist put a chain in my mouth so that he could slowly pull the tooth down, but after surgery he said it would cost £6,000 to do the whole procedure and I couldn’t afford it.”
It might sound like a typical tale of woe from abroad, but the 49-year-old is describing his experience in the UK. “I was stuck with the chain in my mouth for 10 years,” he told The i Paper. “You think the bad stuff all happens in Turkey, but it’s everywhere.”
Dr Akay says she is often asked how Dentakay keeps prices down “especially with inflation in Turkey, but it’s because of the numbers”, she says. “In each clinic we treat around 1,500 patients per month.”
“In the UK a doctor might see less than 100 patients per month, so our doctors are very experienced,” she adds.
She claims the company also “keep costs down because we buy directly from Swiss company Straumann, who are the best and most trusted for implants on the market.”
When it’s time for my check-up, I’m on edge. After a 3D X-ray I’m told that I’ll need a filling removed in order to fit a crown over a broken tooth. I sit in the chair with fists clenched, but the removal is quick and painless. The filling is gone by 10am and the crown fitted by 4pm.
“Implants are just as swift,” Dr Akay says. “We can 3D print the teeth in the lab. We fit temporary teeth and then patients return after three months when the implant is healed to have the permanent teeth fitted.”
Prices for crowns at Dentakay start at £200, with dental implants starting at £340. I stayed at the Rixos Tersane (rixos.com), where rooms cost from £273.
A single dental implant with a crown in the UK can cost from £1,800 to £3,600.
Dr Akay is well aware of the nightmare stories about “Turkey teeth”, and says she wants it to mean something positive for a change.
“We guarantee our implants for life, and the crowns for eight years, because we don’t want people coming back to us with problems,” she adds.
Grant Lakey, a Dentakay patient from Kent, says he saved tens of thousands of pounds after he turned to Turkey as a last resort. “My teeth were loose and painful, it felt they were jostling around in my mouth,” he tells The i Paper.
After failing to get an appointment with his local NHS dentist, which was booked solid, he tried dentists in other counties with no success. “In the end the pain became unbearable so I looped a shoelace around the worst teeth and pulled them out.”
Desperate to find a solution for his other teeth, he started researching dental practices in Turkey. Lakey said he needed four implants in his upper jaw and six in the lower jaw and was quoted £6,900 for everything, including flights and accommodation. “I was shocked – it’s much less than the cost of private care in the UK,” he says, estimating that his treatment, including 25 crowns and several root canals, would have cost around £40,000 in the UK for the same quality of work.
Leaving my swish hotel by the Bosphorus, I flew out from Turkey the following day with a perfectly fitted crown – I could eat again! – and relieved that I hadn’t been another victim, and with my eyes wide open to the caution needed before heading abroad to seek dental work.
