As reality TV has become more of a fixture in our lives, there's been a sharp rise in people going under the knife to achieve a certain look.
Take 25-year-old Connor Durman from ITV2's Love Island. According to Edinburgh based New Town Dental Care, Google searches for 'Thailand teeth', 'veneers Thailand' and 'Thailand veneers price' saw a 100% increase after he revealed he’d flown all the way to Thailand to get his porcelain veneers.
Us Brits are often the butt of bad teeth jokes. However, with the influence of social media and the perfect celebrity gnashers we’re now constantly exposed to, millennials have begun to develop a desire to improve their smiles. This has seen the demand for cosmetic dentistry skyrocket. But while 59% of those surveyed by Barclays said they were willing to spend money in order to achieve the 'perfect smile', the average amount they would shell out was £1,121 – which won’t get you very far here.
Cue the rise in dental tourism. Like Durman, young adults across the UK are being lured by cheap prices in countries like Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Bulgaria and sometimes as far as India or Thailand. But can travelling abroad for your dental work involve major risks?
Dentist Dr Christian Pintado believes so. "These days, high-end aesthetic dentistry has a minimal invasive approach. We try to restore enamel and dentine as much as possible, avoiding aggressive dental preparations like shaving down teeth. However, due to time constraints when going abroad for treatment, it is much more common to undergo irreversible invasive smile makeovers. Issues with the joints of the jaw, gum and nerve inflammation, long-term sensitivity, gum recession and chipping are commonplace."
Statistics from the British Dental Association (BDA) support Pintado’s worries. Twenty-nine percent of dentists surveyed have treated a patient for complications arising from dental work performed abroad. Of the dentists who saw such complications, 60% said problems arose because the initial treatment was of poor quality; 59% because of infection; 56% because of pain; and 33% because the initial treatment was clinically inappropriate. The BDA's scientific adviser, Professor Damien Walmsley urges those considering dental treatment overseas to "check a dentist’s qualifications and experience and whether or not they are insured if things go wrong, as regulation is not always as strict as it is in the UK."
For Dr Alistair McGill from New Town Dental, it's just not worth the risk. "It sounds too good to be true – discounted treatments, great teeth and a holiday in the sun to boot – and it often is."
In the UK, he says, we have stringent laws about the quality of dentistry we are allowed to offer. His clinic has seen patients return from abroad with "poorly fitted veneers, low-quality adhesive or the veneers being so poorly made they are coming loose, or in the worst-case scenarios, irreparable damage done to the teeth themselves in the process of fitting the veneers."
What happens if things go wrong? "Well, this can end up being even more expensive overall, as most UK dentists will charge double or triple to fix work they have not done," says dentist Dr Rhona Eskander.
"However, there are good and bad dentists in all countries," adds Eskander. "What we are seeing more of due to dental tourism is a very cookie-cutter look, where teeth are ultra white and unnatural-looking due to unnecessary crowns and veneers. My signature, the Chelsea Look, almost always starts with alignment with Invisalign to make sure the teeth are straight, allowing the restorative process to be less destructive. This is then followed by 'tweakments' that are so subtle you won’t even know that someone has had work done, their teeth just look naturally beautiful. But this takes time."
Click through to read four women's experiences of making over their smiles abroad…
I always hated the gaps between my teeth and in recent years I became more conscious of the colour of my teeth in terms of how they differed from those of my favourite Instagrammers and beauty bloggers.
I’m pretty active on social media, and constantly seeing 'perfect' teeth online made the insecurities I had about my smile worse.
Slowly I began to notice how my unhappiness with my smile was affecting my confidence more than it ever had before, both online and off. I hated drawing attention to my teeth and would worry what people would think or say about them.
When it came to my Instagram account I only ever posted images of myself taken on my 'best side', where my gaps were less prominent, and I’d always use editing apps to make my teeth look whiter.
I’d seen clinics on Instagram advertise whitening for £300 and composite bonding from £500 but that was already far too much for me so I started to look at quotes abroad. I settled on a clinic in Istanbul where I had laser whitening and composite bonding, for just under £350. I asked for a specific dentist who I knew was more experienced from their Instagram page, but when I got there it was actually quite difficult for me to explain what I wanted due to the language barrier, so they brought in another dentist who was fluent in English so I could explain properly. After that it was smooth sailing.
The total whitening process took 1.5 hours, and I went back two days later for composite bonding on four teeth, to alter the shape and length. Post-treatment I was asked to return the next day for a follow-up to make sure everything looked the way I wanted and that my bite was okay. I wasn’t happy with the way he moulded one tooth so I asked him to file it down during my follow-up.
So many people have commented on how white my teeth are! I thought people would notice that I had bonding done, but so far no one has – which is great because it means the results look natural, which is what I asked for. All in all I feel a lot more confident but now I want to get my bottom teeth done next year, so I’ve started researching how to fix them too.
I’d watched countless hours of YouTube videos while researching what to do about my gummy smile, so when I realised that my Turkish dentist was cutting my gums with a knife instead of a laser as I’d seen online, I was surprised. But I’d come this far and wanted to have a smile I’d be proud of for so long that I ignored the intensely uncomfortable sensation and went with it. I’d actually wanted plastic surgery to alter my jaw but that would have cost £30,000 and I would have needed six months to recover – so in comparison this alternative technique didn’t feel as scary.
I ended up in Turkey after entering a competition on Instagram. One of the influencers I was following had a smile makeover in the UK and her dentist was offering the same to one of her followers. While I didn’t win the competition, the dentist DM'd me and after sending him pictures of my teeth he gave me some advice, but at £1,000 for one veneer (I needed 22), I knew dental work wasn’t an option. I didn’t set out to go abroad, but videos of young women who had travelled for veneers kept popping up on my YouTube homepage, and after thinking about it for a couple of months I decided to go ahead.
I was very set in what I wanted and didn’t get any pushback from my chosen clinic; they simply presented me with veneer options ranging from £2,000 to £8,000. I chose the middle option, making the total for my veneers and gum contouring £5,300.
Initially I was really happy with the results but as soon as I returned home I became anxious and paranoid. I realised that if anything went wrong my dentist was not easily accessible, which worried me tremendously. I found myself spending what felt like hours looking in the mirror to see if I could spot any issues. Thankfully, one year on there haven't been any. Aside from the paranoia, I also had to manage my expectations, because I still have a gummy smile. That said, my smile looks so much better and I feel far more confident especially when it comes to dating. My dating profiles feature plenty of open-mouthed smiling pictures of me and I get compliments on them.
I always felt like I resembled a bunny rabbit. I had two really big front teeth and the rest were pretty small, which meant I wouldn’t really smile in pictures or videos. I don’t think I have a single photo of me smiling before I had my teeth done.
Changing my teeth is something I’ve always wanted to do, but when I got quotes a few years back from UK dentists, crowns alone would have cost me £9,000, which as a student was totally unaffordable. I resolved to wait and save, but when my best friend told me about the affordable dental work available in Turkey, we did our research and were off in a matter of weeks.
I booked in for gum contouring, teeth whitening, deep cleaning and zirconium crowns, and paid far less than I was quoted for crowns alone in the UK. The process was completed within five days, while in the UK I was told it would take weeks. There were no complications and the weather was amazing so my friend and I made a holiday out of it, too.
Since my initial trip two years ago I’ve been again to whiten my teeth a little more. It wasn’t a necessity but another friend decided to get some dental work after seeing mine, so I joined her.
I absolutely love them and have no regrets. I’m so much happier, more confident and I’m constantly smiling. It’s also so nice to hear "Oh wow, you have such a nice smile!" after years of hiding my teeth.
I don’t remember a time that I didn’t dislike my smile. My teeth were super small and my gums were uber visible. I always smiled with my mouth closed and I’d cover my mouth with my hands when I laughed. After years it became second nature. And while it bothered me, it wasn’t until my early 20s, when my friends and I began documenting pretty much everything we did with a camera, that my teeth really started to irk me.
I was born in Iran but hadn’t been there much since moving to the UK as a baby, nonetheless I was aware that the prices for most aesthetic treatments there are a fraction of that in the UK. So it was a no-brainer to have my gums lasered and to get some veneers on my top front teeth in Tehran. There were no language issues as I speak Farsi fluently but I did feel as though my dentist wasn’t really listening to what I wanted; instead he kept telling me what the current on-trend look was and how he would achieve that on me. I wanted a less visible gum line, bigger teeth and something bespoke. I was nervous and in hindsight I should have gone to a few dentists before starting anything, but lack of time was a major factor so I felt pressure to do the procedures with the first dentist I picked.
When I finally got to see my new smile I burst into tears. My gums had not been reduced as much as I would have liked and I felt as though my veneers looked bulky and too fake. Luckily, I’d booked a three-week stay in Iran so the dentist had given me temporary veneers first. I was able to explain what I didn’t like and remedy the situation. Even so, I started to regret my decision to do something so drastic.
It’s been 10 years now and in that time I’ve had a few follow-ups in regards to my veneers, mainly due to chipping, but thankfully I’ve not had any fall out. I still wish my gums weren’t so visible, and I still have moments where I’m self-conscious about my smile. While I saved a lot of money (around £7,000), I think my general confidence levels have risen more due to ageing and life experience than 'improving' my smile.