DIY dental tourism?

Same here. I had an added complication that I didn't yet have my Testosterone back after prostate cancer treatment, so we left it twice as long as normal for bone to grow back after extraction and again after implant before fitting any tops. (Lack of Testosterone in men causes lack of oestrogens which causes osteoporosis - bone thinning, which is not ideal when you are waiting for new bone to grow. My dentist went off and searched research papers, but there was no research on having implants in this situation, and only a little on having implants after menopause which she used as guidance.) I was very pleased with mine, and that she went off to do some extra research for my situation, and was fine with doing it all with extra healing time.

We were expecting I might need some bone transplant, but I didn't - the socket from the extracted root filled in nicely with bone by itself, and then the post anchored in it nicely, but she did it all with plenty of extra time between stages.

They won't put them right. In an emergency, they will take them out, but even then you'll likely have to wait for weeks on painkillers and antibiotics if necessary for an emergency NHS clinic. They won't be taken out with any view to refitting either.

Here's an appalling bit of dental tourism gone bad:

There are companies offering the whole thing in one 6 hour visit. I've no idea how they work and I do wonder if they last 6 hours after you've come out.

One is tempted to say, they would say that wouldn't they? I'd imagine there are good and bad dentists everywhere. Also of course, no medical procedure is without risk as we are always told just before the guy with the drill starts!

Maybe one you fancy might be willing to let you speak to a customer assuming he does not overdose on gdpr as we seem to over here. Brian

That is shocking, although rather appropriate for a DIY group.

Even worse, the screw was probably some metal that rusts over time.

I wonder which country that bodge was done in.

This is the sort of situation where you should obtain a copy of your dental records and keep them.

Not long ago I needed my dental x-rays from almost almost 20 years ago but discovered most of the detailed images had been destroyed.

I suspect the NHS sets rules for retention of dental records but I wonder how well they are observed. One problem I had in getting private medical records was that the doctor had retired (in other cases they may have died) and then it's not clear who's reponsible for controlling old data.

a dentist retires.

In some respects are records actually required? Unable to find a NHS dentist for a dozen years I bit the bullet and went private. The first visit to the private dentist established from Xrays and an examination the full state of health of my teeth and gums. From there I was given alternative priced options on the way forward.

I'm not sure what more a previous a dental record would have established.

Those Xrays may have told you what your teeth were like 20 years ago but not what they a like now. In the intervening years technology has moved on and a modern Xray probably provides more information than then old Xray. You are getting treatment based on what your teeth are like now and not what they were like 20 years ago.

Not dental, but I have access on-line to my medical records. I'm pretty sure that some of the entries from my early childhood are somewhat of a work of fiction. It lists all the immunisations BUT the dates that they would be done and not actually a record if they were actually implemented. I suspect that for a new born and a new medical record that information is automatically included as a prompt to when the child should be immunised. For a digital record for someone older paper records were just ignored but the default entries just left. For one of my relatives multi hospital admissions has shown that the hospital's record keeping is chaotic. Records from previous treatment(s) are missing, even within the same departments.

One problem I had in getting private

Must have been painful screwing it in the first place!

When I was at uni I didn't have a local dentist, and when a filling dropped out I got some two-pack moldable epoxy filler like Milliput and used that (not actually Milliput - I don't think it was available then). Lasted a good many months but my dentist was not amused when I did eventually get to see him.

In my case 20-year-old dental records are important to see if a current illness whose symptoms had first appeared around then could be tied to some irregularities found at the time. A snazzy modern day cone beam dental CT scan can show the mouth in great detail but can't show the cause of a problem all those years ago.

General medical records can be very poorly kept with all sorts of errors and oversights. There have been cases where records of two different people got mixed up and only discovered by accident. I have a copy of my medical records, especially from other hospitals and private clinics. One thing I would like is the same software as my GP which shows trends in test results and do clever filtering to extract certain information.