Dear dental implants (continued)

To begin with, implants are great, but not cheap. This was even more the case at their inception; a tiny market for an extra-small, precise part made of Titanium alloy, plus a delicate and staged procedure explain their high price back then and still today. Their growing popularity didn’t have a huge impact on their cost and having had these procedures over the last 4 decades, I would be the first to say they’ve climbed faster than inflation in spite of some economies of scale. 

Today, the worldwide market for that product and procedure is about $5 billion, with about 5 million units installed. In the United States, the cost for the implant alone is between $1,500 to $3,500 to which a crown must be added, pushing the price range for the set from a staggering $2,500 to $5,000 for a full set. This doesn’t include the bone graft that could run from $500 to $1,500. Still an awful lot of money!

Sure discounters of variable repute claim low-ball prices that aren’t real (see billboard). Western Europe is considerably cheaper, but still expensive. In France an implant and a crown runs between $1,500 to $2,500, but nearby Hungary and Turkey offer significantly better prices (at least on paper). The same is true in America with Mexico and Costa Rica, or Thailand and India if one lives in an expensive Asian location. 

This form of medical tourism isn’t a panacea, however. It takes 3 to 4 month for a graft to take hold, the same time for the implant to be ready to receive the crown, so one has to add multiple trips, costly airfares, hotel stays and living expenses while the process goes on, not to mention crossing one’s fingers while hoping everything will go as plan without a hitch. Sure, vacations can be weaved into that time frame, but it’s far from being as easy as it would seem. 

As always, patients get what they pay for!