TIME WAS that you went to Syria for a weekend to scoop up cheap carpets and curtains. Nowadays it’s more likely to be in search of a cut-price Hollywood smile.
Cosmetic dental surgery, such as veneers, and dental implants are now de rigeur, but in Cyprus they do not come cheap. In nearby Syria they do, which is why around 800 Cypriots each year are travelling to get the procedures done at a fraction of the cost.
“One whole plane, when I went, was full of people going to get their teeth done!” exclaims 42-year-old Panayiota Christofias, a recent visitor to Syria for dental tourism.
Some years ago, Panayiota had visited a local dentist and been quoted a cost of 10,750 euros to replace a missing tooth with an implant, six veneers and three root canals.
A chance meeting at the hairdressers put her in touch with a medical facilitator who recommends dentists and arranges flights and hotels in Syria for the duration of the treatment. Panayiota then visited a recommended Syrian dentist whilst he was in Cyprus for an initial cost estimation. A trip to Syria followed where she had eight teeth veneered with Zirconium, a better quality alternative to the ordinary porcelain which the Cypriot dentist said he would use, one implant and the root canals fitted at a total cost of €2000. Implants involve two visits, one to get the initial screw fitted and a second visit four months later to add the tooth to the screw fixture, but even when she factored in the cost of two plane tickets and hotel stays, her savings were massive.
Chrysoulla Demetriadou went to Syria to have 16 teeth implants after hearing that in Cyprus it would cost nearly 2,000 euros per tooth. Her dentist in Syria charged her €10,000 for the treatment and a full set of implants.
“The dentist was young, and studied in Germany. He offered a good standard of service,” she says.
Both women say they are delighted with the standard of treatment they received, and with their new smiles, but Cypriot dentists have warned of the dangers of going for cheaper treatment abroad.
“I have personally seen many patients who really had problems. They went abroad or to the north for cheaper prices without guarantees and without knowing what system of implants they would have in their mouth,” said Dr Marios Taramides, of the Nicosia Dental Polyclinic.
It was his father, Dr Giorgos Taramides, who performed the first dental implant in Cyprus in 1989.
Marios Kaminaridis, spokesperson for the Chrysovalantou Clinic in Limassol, was equally cautious. “Come here for just one week and see how much we have to do to correct unsteady implants, infections and other difficulties,” he said.
He stressed that while this was not the case in all instances, just in some, price should not be the only motivating factor. “In any case, fixing procedures which were not properly performed can often work out more expensive, and cause more pain and suffering to the patient, than getting the work done in Cyprus initially.”
Irene Nicola, the medical facilitator who linked Chrysoulla and Panayiota up with their Syrian dentist, admits that a lot of ground work is needed to ensure clients are offered high quality work, but even so business is booming. She estimates that about 15 people per week – around 800 a year – are now flying from Cyprus to Syria for dental treatment.
“We have doctors who we tried in the past, and sent people to, and realised that the service they provided was not as good as could be considered very reliable, so we stopped using them,” she says.
On-the-ground experience and reliable personal recommendation, she says, is crucial in preventing the disaster stories that clinics and dentists in Cyprus recount of some of the patients who have been to Syria and Egypt to get dental work done, only to require much more work on their return to fix dental procedures which were poorly performed.
Irene has been involved since the early days of dental tourism to Syria around eight years ago. “It started with the guides accompanying tourist trips. They came to know the local services and which doctors could be relied upon,” she says. Irene underwent dental treatment with a Syrian dentist and, being very pleased with the results, continues to use the same dentist and has recommended him extensively to friends and relatives.
But even if you find a good dentist, Panayiota said that the disadvantage of having treatment done in Syria was that now she had to change her dentist in Cyprus as she could not return to him after having so much work done with someone else. She has a return visit to Syria planned to get the Zirconium tooth fitted onto the screw implant.
The irony of Cypriots going for treatment to Syria is that in the last 10 years Cyprus has itself set itself up as a dental tourism centre.
Cypriots might find local treatment expensive, but the British did not – at least until sterling fell against the euro nearly two years ago.
It is also popular with patients from the Gulf Arab states such as Dubai, who are brought into contact with Cypriot dentists either directly or via medical facilitators.
Medical facilitators have the advantage of knowing the local market, and most especially the expertise of the medical professionals and clinics which they recommend. Picture Perfect is a medical facilitation company based in Limassol which spent a year investigating the medical market in Cyprus before beginning active operations, though they do stress that their research is “ongoing” and “never ends”.
“Because we’ve seen it all we know who to keep away from. We know who has a bad track record and which clinics to keep away from,” said Joanna Matsentides, one of the directors of the Picture Perfect company.
The Nicosia Dental Polyclinic was the first private clinic in Cyprus to actively begin working in the field of dental tourism, starting eight years ago. The implants they use are the Nobel Biocare system of Branemark, which are manufactured by the originators of the dental implant technology and procedure and come with a 10-year guarantee (which looks a little like a VISA card and where each implant has its own unique serial number).
The Chrysovalantou Clinic in Limassol is another private clinic with a large section of the medical tourism market in Cyprus. They had 80 persons visiting them from abroad for dental procedures in 2009.
“We have some fantastic surgeons in Cyprus. It’s a pity a lot of the Cypriots don’t appreciate that and go abroad,” said Matsentides.
The Cyprus Health Service Promotion Board (CHSPB) seeks to promote Cyprus as a medical tourism destination. The current main focus of its activities is the accreditation of the private healthcare institutions operating in Cyprus. Official accreditation of a private clinic or independent medical practitioner is another means, apart from personal recommendations and utilising the expertise of medical facilitators, whereby prospective patients can be assured that certain quality standards are met.
The CHSPB has secured an agreement from the Health Ministry to pay 70-80 per cent of the costs for the accreditation of private healthcare institutes in Cyprus.
“Accreditation does not give guarantees in terms of medical quality – which depends almost entirely on the doctor involved – but in terms of
procedures: hygiene, the types of services provided, that everything is in order and running well. Basically everything else apart from medical quality,” said CHSPB’s Polis Peratikos.
The Health Ministry subsidy is to be provided only to private healthcare institutions who seek accreditation from organisations affiliated to and approved by the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua). This enables their accreditation to be internationally valid and recognisable to prospective patients from around the world.
Once the accreditation process has been completed (currently only the Bank of Cyprus oncological centre has received accreditation under the Health Ministry sponsorship scheme) the CHSPB is seeking to progress to medical audits, which do assess the actual quality of the medical care provided by the individual doctors working within a particular private healthcare institute.
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Before you go
Sourcing reliable, competent and highly skilled medical practitioners is a problem in all countries around the world and the risks involved in going abroad for treatment, even at a greatly reduced cost, have to be offset by rigorous and timely research.
If going to another country for cheaper dental treatment than is available in Cyprus be sure to work with either personal recommendations or a reliable medical facilitation company, check which brand of implants are used by any prospective dentists you are considering, what materials they use and what their accreditations and qualifications are.
Irene Nicola 99-677683; Picture Perfect 25-723573; the Nicosia Dental Polyclinic 22-760000 and Chrysovalantou Clinic 25-339733.
