'My teeth popped out like peas’: Surge in ‘NHS dental refugees’ travelling abroad for care despite government warnings

They are the “NHS dental refugees,” some of the rising numbers of Brits with painful dental problems who can’t get the treatment they need on the health service, and can’t afford to pay for private care back home.

Desperately seeking a fix for their issues, they have travelled more than 2,000 miles for extractions, root canals and dental implants, despite the UK government warning “too many people are suffering life altering injuries” as a result of “dental tourism.”

Among them is Chloe Taylor, 30, a mum-of-three from Cannock, who works in a carer role for her client, who has muscular dystrophy.

She had to have multiple teeth extracted after they “started breaking” during her third pregnancy, which she says was “very scary”.

The NHS provided her with a temporary dental prosthesis, or “plate”, but she says it fit so poorly it either sat too far back and made her wretch, or too far forward which resulted in dribbling.

“I couldn't walk around like that,” she told LBC. “It wasn’t feasible to do, especially going into someone that I look after and not being able to talk properly with it, or having to take it out just to be able to do my job.”

Feeling unable to use the plate, and with her confidence at rock bottom, Chloe says she became a “recluse”, and a “shadow” of her former self.

“I didn't want to leave the house,” she said. “The only time I [did] was to take the kids to school or to go to work. Other than that, I wouldn't go out round the shops or anything like that. I wouldn't go on a girl's night.”

With the NHS unable to provide her with tooth implants, she looked into going private in the UK, and was quoted between £16,500 and £27,500 for the work.

“That's over a year of wages for me, and that's every last penny of my wages going in a savings pot,” she said. “How am I meant to live then? It wasn’t doable at all.”

As a last resort, she started to research travelling abroad to get the work done. She gathered quotes from dentists in eastern Europe and Turkey, and settled on Dentakay in Istanbul, where she paid £9,000 for the removal of five teeth, and insertion of eight implants.

And, despite figures from the British Dental Association (BDA) suggesting that 86% of UK dentists have treated patients for issues caused by procedures carried out abroad, Chloe said any nervousness mainly centred around “going somewhere different, leaving the house. It was a big step to actually come here in the first place.”

Dentakay says they’ve seen a huge influx of Brits travelling to their clinics for treatment - up from just 15 in 2019 to 6,000 last year.

Their figures mirror a boom in Brits turning to “dental tourism” post-covid.

“Many dentists had huge backlogs of appointments to fulfil following the pandemic, when we were virtually closed for about a whole year, a whole year's worth of appointments were lost,” says Eddie Crouch, chair of the BDA. “As a consequence, patients are now turning up with large amounts of treatment-need, and it's very difficult to have the capacity to deliver that.”

He says dentists are also “turning away from the NHS”, attracted by a “slight increase in income” and “far better” work-life balance of private practice.

As a result, BDA figures suggest the unmet need for NHS dentistry in England now stands at 14m people, or well over 1 in 4 of the adult population.

And shocking images from across the country over the last two years show desperate people hoping to get registered queuing for hours outside practices taking on new NHS patients.

In the most extreme cases, people are taking matters into their own hands. YouGov figures suggest one in ten Britons have attempted their own dental work, with most doing so because they were “unable, one way or another, to get an appointment with a dentist.”

The survey exposed shocking examples of DIY dentistry, with people using cement and superglue to try to fix dental issues, attempting to treat infections with urine, and replacing missing teeth with ‘heated polybeads’.

Among those who shared their experiences, 34% had pulled or tried to pull out their own teeth, 32% gave themselves fillings, and others attempted to file down broken teeth, fix crowns, or treat their own abscesses and infections.

Grant Lakey, 61, a plumber from Southend, pulled out four of his own teeth because he couldn’t access an NHS dentist.

“I put over a really thin shoelace on my tooth and garrotted them out,” Grant told LBC. “[The lace] went around the base, and it pushed it out like popping peas. It was awful.”

The father-of-two lost some of his teeth after an accident at work, and says loose teeth and exposed nerves had left him “in a frenzy”.

He was quoted £30,000 to have the work done privately in the UK. “I can't afford that,” he says. “No working man can afford that.”

Despite Brits finding cheaper alternatives abroad, the Government and medical professionals here warn that treatment in countries like Turkey can be risky.

According to Dentakay’s CEO, Onur Akay, there are two main reasons the company is able to deliver “quality” care while keeping costs significantly lower than the UK: cheaper labour costs and financial support from the Turkish government to expand their operations.

“Of course there are some bad teeth, some bad treatments [carried out in Turkey]” he tells LBC, but claims many Turkish dental practices are of a high standard, advising Brits to carry out extensive research before deciding on a provider: “Don't be in rush, read all Google reviews, Trustpilot reviews, bad reviews and also the good reviews as well.”

The BDA’s data suggests the main concern for British dentists about dental tourism is the continuity of care after patients have returned home.

“I've seen many patients who've been abroad for dental treatment have had excellent care,” says Eddie Crouch, chair of the BDA. “But sadly … we know that there are a percentage of people who do go abroad and have significant problems.”

He says when things go wrong abroad, patients might find dentists back in the UK are reluctant to treat them “because the responsibility may then transfer to them.”

And says they might be forced to get remedial care privately, which could be “quite a lot more than they had originally spent on their… treatment abroad.”

The issue is a concern for the UK government.

“Too many people are suffering life altering injuries because of taking up these offers of dental care in situations that are not properly regulated and where the medical practitioners are not properly qualified,” health minister Stephen Kinnock tells LBC.

“We are working to ensure that there's greater awareness of the risks associated with this,” he continues. “Obviously what we can do in other overseas jurisdictions is very limited, but we are doing some campaigns and awareness raising on social media to just try and make sure that people are really, really careful and think really, really carefully before they travel overseas for these procedures.”

When asked if a time will come when Brits can rely on the NHS for their dental care, Mr Kinnock said the Labour government inherited an NHS dentistry “in crisis.”

He says demand for NHS dentistry was “going through the roof, and yet there was an underspend on the contract and there's all sorts of terrible outcomes for people.”

Describing the challenge ahead as a “mountain to climb”, he said Labour is providing 700,000 additional urgent dental appointments per year, and implementing a tooth-brushing scheme for children aged 3 to 5 in high-need areas.

They are also working to reform the dental contract, prioritising prevention and dentist retention. “Fundamentally, we've got to have an NHS contract that incentivises dentists to do NHS work,” he says.