Four months ago I had major dental work done at the surgery of Dr Motiwala in Hyderabad, India. So far it seems that it was very successful.
I had long-standing problems with the teeth in my upper jaw and Dr Motiwala extracted all remaining upper teeth (10 of them). They were replaced by a single-piece permanent denture of 14 teeth, secured on 10 single piece implants.
The teeth in the lower jaw were serviceable though not very good either. But in order to match them to a corrected upper row I needed a fair bit of work there as well. There were 2 implants supporting a crown for a missing molar; a root canal and a couple of fillings; and a set of ten cosmetic crowns. All this allowed the implantologist to fashion the bite, and provided greater flexibility in selection of tooth color for whole-of-mouth.
The implant technology was 'immediate-load', which was what I wanted. The alternative, and the more traditional way, is to have implants placed and then to wait for several months with temporary dentures while they bed into the bone. Under 'immediate load' all the work could be done in one two-week visit, with the restriction that I could not chew for four months. The KOS / BCS implants are shallower, and there was no bone lift.
My teeth now look excellent and my bite is very even in three dimensions. That is not easy and took several sessions over successive days; trying and adjusting the draft implants.
The cost for all of this work was about $US15K (about $A22K), plus travel & accommodation. I don't think I would have got change out of $A100K in Australia.
When I was considering going overseas to get this work done I found it hard to find good information about prospective providers. I expected to find blogs populated by lots of people with genuine experience and I just couldn't find them. There were plenty of testimonials that were transparently staff-written, but only a few experiences that seemed genuine & informative. So how do you know who is genuinely good out of thousands advertising these services in India, Philippines, Thailand, Hungary and other places? Will there be a lot of extra charges? Will I get to India (or wherever) and be told "So sorry, your jaw is not suitable for immediate load after all", meaning I would back to a strategy of 2 trips and two periods of time off work?
I chose Dr Motiwala from a couple of positive reviews. I am working from a sample of one, of course. I can't say that another patient will not have problems, but I can say that Dr Motiwala is an expert dental implantologist who does high-standard work. Its a pretty small practice. When I was there only Dr Motiwala was doing the dental work, supported by a set of assistants. I think there are a couple of other dentists who were away at the time.
The service as advertised is genuine, and the prices they quote are intended to be what you will pay (with maybe a few cheap additional x-rays, fillings etc). I did speak to three other patients who were near the end of their treatment and were also happy so far - still with the 4 months of bedding in to go, of course. It is important to provide an OBG and some mouth photos for the dental surgeon to view.
