Going abroad for medical/dental treatment- possibly Turkey

textbook

 
Dental work seems very expensive in Britain, seeing a consultant privately- possibly £270.   I heard it's £30 to see a consultant in Turkey and the doctors just as good.  My friend is Turkish and always gets his dental work in Turkey and he also gets his medical issues double checked there as well as using the NHS. Apparently the private hospitals are very good.  Does anyone know about using foreign doctors?   

From my own experieince-twenty years ago I saw a doctor for prostatitis in Bulgaria who was using DNA PCR to treat the condition.  While there, a registrar (NHS doctor or student doctor) from Scotland who was there too told me if you had tried to get treatment on the NHS and that they would only give you two weeks of antibiotics and that's it for the condition.  He was moving around the wards in his training.

 Physios have also told me the NHS is desperately underfunded. I really need an MRI on my hip.

I also saw excellent doctors in the US, which wasn't particularly cheap but they were very good and prices weren't outrageous for outpatient treatment (18 years ago). 

sheramber

You could get a prIvate MRI  in this country.

Prices seem to vary form £300 - £600. depending  on where you go.

You can contact local ones for a price.

Voyager2002

Earlier this year I travelled to Poland for dental treatment. My original plan had been Turkey, but all the clinics that I shortlisted turned out to be making claims on their websites that were not true. Undoubtedly there are some excellent doctors and dentists there, but finding them, and distinguishing the good ones from those who are fraudulent or incompetent, is not easy.

I found it impossible to arrange medical travel insurance: all the policies I looked at (hundreds all together) excluded cover from journeys that were made in order to obtain medical or dental treatment. Fortunately the GHIC gives pretty good medical cover in Poland and most other EU countries: I doubt if this is the case in Turkey.

My dental treatment in Poland cost £500 and would have cost £3,000 or more in this country, so there is plenty of scope for big savings so long as you can find a clinic that you can trust.

textbook

Surely a reviewed hospital or doctor/dentist reviewed honestly on a forum by people who've been/possibly other expats would be a  good start.   This was how I found a doctor years ago; I spoke to people who had met him or reviewed him thoroughly and it at least appeared to be a good decision.

I wouldn't trust a hospital's own reviews on itself in somewhere like Turkey obviously.

Voyager2002

textbook said:

Surely a reviewed hospital or doctor/dentist reviewed honestly on a forum by people who've been/possibly other expats would be a  good start.   This was how I found a doctor years ago; I spoke to people who had met him or reviewed him thoroughly and it at least appeared to be a good decision.

I wouldn't trust a hospital's own reviews on itself in somewhere like Turkey obviously.

That would be a good start...

In the case of dentistry, most patients (myself included) do not really know how to tell good treatment from bad, apart from things like pain relief and general 'manner'. It is perfectly possible for someone to leave a dental clinic relieved that it did not hurt too much and their problem is solved, write a good review, and then discover six months later that the treatment they received was not appropriate and their problem has actually got worse. I have not thought about other medical treatment.

Grumpy_chap

The BBC did a programme on this recently which the OP may find interesting.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0019gps

Bicycleman22

You can get an MRI privately for £300 -£700 but the results are not transferable to the NHS. For something life threatening  you can go to your doctor with the results. For something like a hip MRI unless you are prepared to pay for all the treatment I imagine you will be exactly where you are now after a private scan. Dont forget it will be about £200 pound for the consultant as well, once before and once for the results.

I have been told by a dental nurse although I dont know for sure that tooth implants in Turkey are put in with different screws than are used here. Could be very expensive if it goes wrong.

Also you will need  travel insurance that covers going abroad for treatment, most ordinary policies dont cover this..... I guess your Turkish friend does not have that issue.

Personally I would use overseas hospitals  if the wait, the  pain and worry was bad enough to be worth the risk.

Voyager2002

Bicycleman22 said:

I have been told by a dental nurse although I dont know for sure that tooth implants in Turkey are put in with different screws than are used here. Could be very expensive if it goes wrong.

Also you will need  travel insurance that covers going abroad for treatment, most ordinary policies dont cover this..... I guess your Turkish friend does not have that issue.

Personally I would use overseas hospitals  if the wait, the  pain and worry was bad enough to be worth the risk.

There has been some discussion of dental implants and foreign dentists over on the Health board, and I raised some of the issues with the consultants I saw in my local dental school (I was given some treatment there to give the students practice, but they don't do things like implants). Basically there are several different companies that make implants, and when your implant needs routine maintenance you have to go to a dentist who is set up with the same brand as your implant. Plus, some brands are better than other and older versions may still be used but do not perform as well as the latest technology. I was advised to ensure that whatever implant I had fitted was from the same company that is used by local dentists: since most dentists in my area do not say on their websites what brand of implant they fit this involved a fair number of phone calls.

I spent about three days solidly trying to find travel insurance that covered going abroad for treatment, and could not find even one.

textbook

Voyager2002 said:

Bicycleman22 said:

I have been told by a dental nurse although I dont know for sure that tooth implants in Turkey are put in with different screws than are used here. Could be very expensive if it goes wrong.

Also you will need  travel insurance that covers going abroad for treatment, most ordinary policies dont cover this..... I guess your Turkish friend does not have that issue.

Personally I would use overseas hospitals  if the wait, the  pain and worry was bad enough to be worth the risk.

There has been some discussion of dental implants and foreign dentists over on the Health board, and I raised some of the issues with the consultants I saw in my local dental school (I was given some treatment there to give the students practice, but they don't do things like implants). Basically there are several different companies that make implants, and when your implant needs routine maintenance you have to go to a dentist who is set up with the same brand as your implant. Plus, some brands are better than other and older versions may still be used but do not perform as well as the latest technology. I was advised to ensure that whatever implant I had fitted was from the same company that is used by local dentists: since most dentists in my area do not say on their websites what brand of implant they fit this involved a fair number of phone calls.

I spent about three days solidly trying to find travel insurance that covered going abroad for treatment, and could not find even one.

Is that the health section on this forum-  MSE or another forum?    I've found forums for particular issues a great way to get honest information

textbook

Bicycleman22 said:

You can get an MRI privately for £300 -£700 but the results are not transferable to the NHS. For something life threatening  you can go to your doctor with the results. For something like a hip MRI unless you are prepared to pay for all the treatment I imagine you will be exactly where you are now after a private scan. Dont forget it will be about £200 pound for the consultant as well, once before and once for the results.

I have been told by a dental nurse although I dont know for sure that tooth implants in Turkey are put in with different screws than are used here. Could be very expensive if it goes wrong.

Also you will need  travel insurance that covers going abroad for treatment, most ordinary policies dont cover this..... I guess your Turkish friend does not have that issue.

Personally I would use overseas hospitals  if the wait, the  pain and worry was bad enough to be worth the risk.

Agree.   I'd go abroad too if I had enough info on where I was going.   Regarding private MRI or whatever in rip off Britain- you could get the private consultant to write to your GP to get you treatment on NHS.   So the costs could end with scan and consultation, I'm not sure.   I got my MRI (consulattion) because a private osteopath wrote to my GP, without that letter wouldve been a lot harder.

devondisplay

You can probably find a group on facebook, don't be deterred easy, its much much cheaper to get treated in Turkey and some have verified reviews, one I come across is registered with general medical council and some of these medical people seem to be at the top of their game, there private hospitals look very very good