Manuela, 35: “The Race to Save Money Cost Me Dearly.”

In the style of this blog, I am telling the true story of a patient, under a different name.

I believe these things — which really happened — can help patients make an informed choice.

“My name is Manuela, I’m thirty-five, and I work in commercial sales. Saving money, sometimes, can cost you dearly.”

This is the story of how I destroyed perfectly healthy teeth…

The saving and its consequences

…because saving does not always equal quality, and that can lead to serious consequences.

…chasing an aesthetic dream sold at half price by people who run dentistry like an assembly line.

At thirty I had healthy teeth. Not perfectly aligned, sure. A little crooked, a couple of stains. Nothing that compromised function or health.

But I worked with the public, and I wanted that Hollywood smile I saw in the ads. Blindingly white, straight as a ruled line.

An aesthetic whim, I admit it. But a whim that someone was ready to turn into a tragedy.

The Italian quotes were high. Then the ads showed up on social media. Levantia. Clinics gleaming in the photos, dazzling smiles, impossible prices. “Perfect smile in a week at half the price!”

On social I saw only triumphant photos. People coming back with teeth straight out of a toothpaste commercial. Nobody talked about problems. Only successes and miraculous savings.

I did the maths. In Italy I’d have spent almost double. I told myself what everyone tells themselves.

Why should I pay more? The materials are the same, the techniques are the same. The only difference is the cost of living. A logic that’s perfect on paper. False in reality — but I’d only understand that later.

The trip

I booked. Flight plus clinic, one week, crowns on every tooth, top and bottom. An all-inclusive package that on paper looked like the smart move of someone who knows how to buy well.

The clinic looked modern. On the first day they filed down all my teeth. All of them. Top and bottom. Healthy teeth reduced to stumps. “It’s necessary for the crowns,” they said.

I nodded. What did I know? They were the professionals. In a week they did everything. Impressions, try-ins, final delivery.

An impressive speed. When I saw the result I was thrilled. Brilliant white teeth, perfectly aligned, like the ones in glossy magazines.

I paid, I took the plane, I came home proud. I posted the photos on social. Everyone complimented me. I felt beautiful. For a few weeks I was happy.

Then it started. A strange taste in my mouth. Nothing dramatic at first. Just a subtle discomfort. I tried to use dental floss as I always had. It wouldn’t go in. Literally no space between one tooth and the next. I tried an interdental brush. Impossible. The crowns were so close together that nothing passed through.

“At least food doesn’t get stuck,” I thought. I didn’t understand that this was exactly the problem.

After two months I developed terrible halitosis

At first I thought it was temporary. It got worse every day. At work my colleagues started keeping their distance when I spoke.

I saw their expressions when I came close.

I used mouthwashes, gum, sprays, anything. The smell always came back. Stronger and stronger. Humiliating. I had spent thousands of euros on a beautiful smile and couldn’t open my mouth without people stepping away.

I called the Levantia clinic. “It’s normal at first, it’ll pass.” It didn’t pass. After six months I was desperate. The smile was lovely but the breath was so terrible I couldn’t even kiss my partner.

I decided to see a dentist in Italy

When you examined me, your expression said everything before the words did.

“Manuela, unfortunately the crowns are completely wrong. There’s no room for hygiene. Bacteria build up between the teeth and the gums, causing infections.”

The radiographs showed the truth.

Under those apparently perfect crowns, the gums were inflamed, there was plaque accumulation that couldn’t be removed, the bone was starting to resorb.

“If we don’t act now, you’ll lose the teeth. All of them.”

I was in shock. How was it possible? The teeth looked so beautiful.

“Aesthetics aren’t everything. These crowns don’t respect basic biological principles. They were made to look nice, not to last.”

The only way to save the situation was to redo everything from scratch.

Remove all the crowns, devitalise the teeth because by now they were compromised, treat the infections, rebuild everything correctly. “But this time we’ll have to root-canal the teeth. The biological damage is permanent.”

I cried when I realised what I had done. I had walked into that clinic with healthy, living teeth. Now, to save the situation, I had to accept having every tooth devitalised at thirty-one. Dead teeth.

The path to redo everything was long and expensive.

Not only did I have to pay again for work done properly, but I also lost something that will never come back. My natural, living teeth. Every appointment reminded me how stupid my original choice had been. Levantia’s “saving” cost me triple. The initial work plus the reconstruction, plus the permanent biological damage.

Today I have a beautiful smile again, but this time made correctly. I can floss, do my hygiene normally, I no longer have halitosis. But every time I brush my teeth I think of those healthy teeth I had filed down for an aesthetic whim.

Let’s do the maths. At Levantia I spent five thousand euros. To redo everything correctly in Italy I spent another eighteen thousand. Total: twenty-three thousand euros for what I could have had by spending twelve thousand if I’d stayed in Italy from the start. I spent almost double to end up with dead teeth instead of living ones.

But the real cost isn’t economic. It’s biological. They’re dead teeth that may last years, but they will never again be living teeth. I lost something irrecoverable chasing an illusory saving.

If you’re thinking of going abroad to save money on your teeth, stop.

Ask yourself whether it’s worth risking your health to save a few thousand euros. Your teeth are like your eyes. There are things you should never economise on.

Those clinics see thousands of patients a year. Assembly line. They don’t follow you over time, they take no responsibility if something goes wrong. When I tried to contact them about the problems, they stopped answering. Just like that. As if I no longer existed.

The Italian Society of Periodontology and Implantology has presented alarming data. In more than a third of cases, dental-tourism patients need corrective treatment on their return to Italy. Sixty per cent develop complications within six months.

What happened to Manuela has a name in the literature. In English they call it Turkey teeth: healthy teeth ground down to stumps to make room for a row of white crowns, produced abroad in a week. Martin Kelleher, in the British Dental Journal in 2023, writes it without softening — it is the elective destruction of healthy tissue in exchange for an aesthetic that fades fast and costs double when it has to be corrected. It is not the tale of one unlucky woman. It is a phenomenon with a recurring clinical signature.

And it is not rare. In 2025, again in the British Dental Journal, Janine Doughty and colleagues combed through more than a hundred UK press articles on dental tourism: behind the triumphant social-media smiles runs a quiet river of patients returning with complications, and of professionals who warn without being heard. Kaul and Raveendran, in the same journal in 2025, call it the dental aftermath — the consequences that fall, months later, on those left to pick up the pieces at home.

There is even the flight itself in this reckoning. Felkai and colleagues (British Dental Journal, 2023) remind us that flying too soon after a dental procedure exposes you to barotrauma and barodontalgia: at least 24 hours after a restoration, far longer after endodontics or a sinus lift. The “flight-plus-crowns-in-seven-days” package ignores physics as well as biology.

Manuela’s breath, moreover, was never a cosmetic problem. It was a signal: persistent halitosis almost always tells a bacterial and periodontal story, not one of poor hygiene. Under those over-tight crowns the bacteria had found a perfect niche and nobody to disturb them.

The lower upfront cost often hides a biological disaster. The difference between work made to look nice and work made to last is enormous, and it is measured in years, not in photos. There are no shortcuts in dentistry, as in life. The apparent saving can become the highest price you will ever pay.

The relationship of trust with your own dentist is priceless. A professional who knows your clinical history, who follows you over time, who steps in promptly if something goes wrong. You won’t find that in a clinic on the other side of Europe where you are just a number.

Thank you for saving me from a situation that was becoming irreversible. Thank you for rebuilding everything the right way, for letting me smile again, and for giving me back the confidence of perfect hygiene and fresh breath.

I learned the hardest way possible.

References

Dental tourism is a field where the clinical literature consists mostly of editorial analyses and reviews of the professional press rather than randomised trials: no ethics committee would ever approve a study that assigns patients to substandard care. The sources below, all from the British Dental Journal, represent the highest level of evidence available on this phenomenon.

1. Doughty J, Moore D, Ellis M, Jago J, Ananth P, Montasem A, Holden ACL, Johnson I. Contemporary dental tourism: a review of reporting in the UK news media. Br Dent J. 2025;238(4):230-237. doi:10.1038/s41415-025-8330-2 · PMID: 40021870
2. Kelleher M. Controversies about so-called ‘Turkey teeth’. Br Dent J. 2023;235(10):804-805. doi:10.1038/s41415-023-6562-6 · PMID: 38001205
3. Felkai P, Nakdimon I, Felkai T, Levin L, Zadik Y. Dental tourism and the risk of barotrauma and barodontalgia. Br Dent J. 2023;234(2):115-117. doi:10.1038/s41415-023-5449-x · PMID: 36707585
4. Kaul A, Raveendran B. Health tourism and the dental aftermath. Br Dent J. 2025;238(12):907-908. doi:10.1038/s41415-025-8900-3 · PMID: 40579495