Book me on a flight - I'm off to the dentist

9:33am Thursday 27th March 2008

Patients from Sussex are increasingly travelling overseas to visit a dentist.

Residents of Chichester and Crowborough are the most likely in the county to head to places such as Hungary for cut-price dental treatments, according to new research.

Chichester was third in a top 20 list of South Coast enquiries about foreign dental work, behind Southampton and Bournemouth, and hit the number 18 spot nationally.

It was closely followed by Crowborough, which came in at number 19 with about 43 inquiries a month and an average age of 60 for those looking into overseas treatment.

Elsewhere in the county, Brighton came 51st for inquiries to the website RevaHealth.com, and Crawley was placed at 101.

Meanwhile, Worthing did not even make the top 200.

The website which carried out the study has around 50 inquiries a month from people in Chichester, where the average age of inquirers was 57.

People in Crawley inquired fewer than ten times a month and had an average age of 50.

The average age of the 30 or so Brightonians checking out the facilities abroad each month was 29.

But dentist Richard Beioley said he was not aware of the financial benefits of getting treated abroad and said he had not had any queries from his customers about it.

Mr Beioley, who works at the Richmond House Dental Surgery in South Street, Chichester, said: "I'm not aware that dental tourism is an issue. It has not been something that has been mentioned to me in my practice."

Of the would-be dental tourists from Chichester, more than 80 per cent planned to have dental implants.

Many of them made detailed inquiries about being treated in Hungarian capital Budapest by VitalEurope, which treats more than 200 British people a month at its Budapest clinic.

A survey of VitalEurope customers showed that more than 90 per cent of them cited saving money as the main reason they looked overseas.

With savings of up to 50 per cent on equivalent treatment in Britain and more than a quarter of patients spending more than £5,000 on treatment, the lure of foreign treatment is obvious.

Thousands of people are taking advantage of low air fares and cheaper treatments abroad to save money on dental work.

Last year alone, 45,000 people from Britain travelled overseas for dental treatment, up 50 per cent from the 30,000 in 2006.

That figure is expected to rise even further this year.

A spokeswoman for the British Dental Association warned that while cheaper dental care abroad was financially appealing, follow-up treatment and the cost of dealing with any complications must be considered.

She said the cost of cosmetic dentistry and the scarcity of NHS dentists may also be factors in the rise in the number of people travelling abroad for treatment. She said: "It is practically impossible to have dental implants on the NHS as its treatment is limited.

"There is a lot of work and technical skill involved in making implants and that cost can't be met by the NHS so people have to pay for it themselves.

"There are also problems of being able to find an NHS dentist."

In the top ten table for inquiries, London came first, Liverpool second and Manchester third, followed by Southampton, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, Belfast, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Huddersfield, York, Blackpool, Cambridge, Chichester, Crowborough and Oxford.

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