Sam M.'s Full-Mouth Dentures Story

In 2018 I had my teeth pulled and needed dentures. I went to a dentist in San Francisco, and when that didn't work out I went to a second one, and between the two of them I spent somewhere close to $70,000. In all that time I don't think I had a single month where they were fine.

They were acrylic teeth on a titanium frame, which is a normal way to make them and is usually cheaper, so I'm not complaining about that part. The problem was they kept cracking. A tooth would chip or split on ordinary food, I'd go back in, they'd take the whole piece out, fix it and put it back, and a few weeks later something else would go.

Then the lockdowns hit and there was nowhere to go anyway, so I lived with it. I stopped eating half the things I like. I got used to it, more or less, and told myself I'd deal with it when things opened up again.

Who Bites Bones?

Every time I went back, the explanation was about my bite. I was apparently chewing things that were too hard for it. At one point somebody told me I must have been biting on bones.

I don't eat bones. Nobody eats bones. And I wasn't being careless with them either, because by then I knew exactly what happened when they broke. I was being careful and they still cracked on an almond.

I've since learned that acrylic does chip, and that if it keeps chipping a dentist is right to wonder whether the patient is putting too much force through it. Asking me that once was fair enough. What bothered me is that it never turned into anything else. They'd break, he'd fix them, he'd tell me to be careful, and they'd break again. Nobody ever came back to me and said maybe we should build these out of something harder.

$200 Just to Be Sent Somewhere Else

The third dentist I saw was a younger guy and I thought he was sharp. He took a look and said the whole thing had to come out and be remade in zirconia, which is a much harder material that doesn't chip the way acrylic does. He was right and that's exactly what I ended up having done. I just didn't have it done by him, because he quoted me $60,000, or $70,000 if I needed more implants put in.

It wasn't only about the money though. It was also what it cost me to get to that number. Every dentist charged around $200 just to look in my mouth for five minutes. Then you drive across town for the X-ray. Then somewhere else again for the CT scan, another $200 or $300. Then you bring the pictures back and pay him again to look at them. Every one of those is its own appointment you have to book and get to. I was six or seven hundred dollars in before anybody had touched my teeth.

So I asked him what the procedure was actually called. I took that information, Googled it at home, and Thailand came up.

What Surprised Me

I always assumed America would do a better job. That's the only reason I'd never looked anywhere else. Then I sent a clinic in Bangkok the same treatment plan I'd been given here, and they came back at $30,000 for all of it.

That got my attention. But what actually decided it for me was how they worked. Everything was in one building. The X-ray, the CT scan, the lab, all of it there. They mill the zirconia on site, so when something needs adjusting it gets adjusted that afternoon instead of being mailed out and coming back wrong two weeks later. And it isn't one dentist doing every part of the job himself. There were different specialists, and each focused on their specialty all day long.

The waiting room was full of foreigners. Australians, Europeans, Americans. I wasn't the only one who'd worked out that Thailand was a better alternative than doing it at home.

The whole thing took ten days, and three or four visits in total. They'd make a piece, I'd try it, and three days later they'd have the next one ready. They have their own cars and drivers, so somebody picked me from the hotel and brought me back for every appointment, and picked me up at the airport when I landed. They fed you if you were there over lunch. All of that was included in the price. They even accepted a credit card with no extra charge, which most dentists here won't even do. And everybody spoke English, including the dentists, the front desk, and the assistants. I never once had trouble following what was going on.

I should say they're not the cheapest clinic in Bangkok. I'm sure I could have found somebody to do it for less, but I wasn't looking for the cheapest.

Recovery

They had me come back after two weeks to check whether anything had loosened, then again a couple of months later, then at six months, when they take the whole thing out, clean it properly and put it back in. No charge, and they drive you both ways for that too. I was spending time in Thailand during that stretch anyway, so it was easy for me. Somebody flying in and out would have to plan those trips, and that's worth knowing before you go.

The first week isn't comfortable and you're aware there's something in your mouth. After that it stops being something you think about.

Now

It's been over a year and they feel like my own teeth. That's all I ever wanted out of it, for them to be normal and for me to stop thinking about them.

I eat steak, chips, hot food, whatever's in front of me. Nothing has cracked, not once.

Close friends ask me about them, and strangers can't tell that they're dentures at all. One thing I tell everybody now is to make sure they don't make the teeth too white. You want a bit of off-white color in there so it matches what's already in your mouth.

If I could go back, the thing I'd change isn't the country. It's that I'd have flown over for the consultation before I spent a dollar here. A consultation there is about thirty dollars. Here it's two hundred to be looked at for five minutes and sent to three other buildings. For the price of one set of consultations in San Francisco, I could have found out what I actually needed.

And I'd have paid for the better material the first time around instead of paying for the whole job twice.

The Numbers

I was quoted $70,000 in the US for the redo in zirconia. In Bangkok, the same treatment plan came to $30,000. That's a savings of roughly $40,000, and that comparison is just the redo quote against what I paid in Thailand. It doesn't even count the roughly $70,000 I'd already spent on the original acrylic dentures that kept cracking. If you count that too, this whole detour cost me a lot more than it needed to.

Sam M., 75, San Francisco, CA. Retired, back to eating steak, and still a little annoyed about the bones.