My dental work at two years

Two-Year Followup on my Dental Work

[I posted a two-year followup on my dental work on Topix on April 13, 2013. I threw in some of my other opinions too.]

p. 178, 3650 and 3651

ChicagoDave
#3651, 3650 [Note: Topix displayed the posts out of order, with Part 2 appearing before Part 1. Very confusing back then, but I've straightened it out below.]
Apr 13, 2013

Two-year update!
I had 28 crowns placed by Dr. Prada back in April 2011, with crown lengthening surgery performed by another member of his team, Dr. Gonzales in December 2010. I described this in length in posts 2138 and 2139.

I'm glad to report that everything is going well, and that I've had only one minor problem: My upper left lateral incisor crown fell off and had to be re-cemented back on. It chose to fall off the day before Christmas, so I had to wait a week for my local dentist to return from vacation. Oh, well. Neither the crown nor the tooth were damaged, and the re-cementing was easily done by a local dentist. My natural teeth are VERY short and Dr. Prada's crowns are beautifully long, so I can almost excuse this. But it happened, so I'm reporting it to readers of the board. [Note added later: This crown kept on falling off, and in July 2013 I went back down for a root canal and post on that tooth. Details below.]

That was the only problem I have had. My gums are still lovely pink with no trace of inflammation and the crowns are still beautiful. I go to a local dentist in North Carolina for frequent cleanings, and whenever he does an examination, he always exclaims how incredible the crown "margins" are. (The margins are where the crown fits the natural tooth. Crowns made by most laboratories fit the teeth only so-so or poorly, allowing for gum inflammation and/or decay. I had problems with margin fit from crowns made in 1995 by a well-regarded American dentist and lab.) [Note added in August 2014: My dentist is still impressed with my dental work even 3.5 years later.] Dr. Prada still answers any emails I send to him very quickly. So what more can I say?

I used to be an avid reader of this board, and in fact had read ALL the posts posted through the mid 2012. But I no longer have any need to study Costa Rican dentists, so I haven't kept up with the board postings. (It seems I'm not missing a lot....)

When folks ask me for references to CR dentists, I always suggest:
1. Dr. Prada's group (also does implants)
And in NO PARTICULAR ORDER also:
2. Other US-trained specialists (prosthodontists or periodontists), NOT general dentists
3. The Cavallinis, or
4. Mike Lomax's "Costa Rica Dental Team"
[Note: These are still my recommendations, though I hasten to add that I have heard many good things about a couple other dentists since my dental work, as explained elsewhere in this blog. And I still prefer specialists.]

If someone asks me for an implant recommendation (which I have not thoroughly researched since I didn't need them), I always recommend Dr. Prada's group first (since I know the periodontist who would perform the implant and the prosthodontist who would place the crown) and then the Cavallinis (who have done thousands of them). [Note: And I recommend a couple other dentists that I've learned about from the Internet....]

I understand the term "implantologist" to be one of those wonderfully evocative terms that marketeers love to come up with.

These recommendations come from literally hundreds of hours of research, including a four-day fact-finding trip to CR in late 2010. I have talked with scores of patients face-to-face, and via email and phone back in 2010. I have a lot of personal experience with Dr. Prada, so I feel I can recommend him without reservation.

I have visited the clinics of the Cavallinis and Mike Lomax, and talked with many of their patients, but I am not a patient of either. I visited the Cavallinis’ clinic in late 2010 and talked with more than two dozen patients, both there and from the internet postings. It's legit, and I received NO bad reviews, and a couple of wonderful, miraculous stories. I also visited Mike Lomax's clinic and talked with patients. Also thoroughly on the up-and-up. His clinic has done full-mouth restorations with my Prettau "full-contour" (solid, no porcelain facing) zirconia at incredibly low cost.

There are literally scores of CR dentists marketing themselves to the American market. I researched many of them, but few passed muster. FOLKS, PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR C.R. DENTIST AND/OR U.S. DENTIST WITH GREAT CARE!

(Disclaimer: I never researched Dr. Anglada or Dr. Castro because I was focusing on dentists specializing in full-mouth restoration. Dr. Anglada and Dr. Castro are known chiefly for their implants, so I have no opinion about them, either positive or negative.)

By the way, you can search this board for particular dentists easily with Google. For example, to search for mentions of Mike Lomax’s group, use a command like this in Google:

site:www.topix.com/forum/world /costa-rica/THGCO47LHH1FS7DR7
(Lomax OR 90210 OR "Costa Rica Dental Team")
[NOTE added September 2014: This SITE: keyword is a great idea, but I noticed that this no longer works on the Topix board. Search engines limit the results to only one hit on Topix. Sorry, folks.]

This will be a single line in Google, but I’m spreading it over two separate lines here to enhance readability.

The “site:” prefix means “search this Topix board”. The parentheses surrounding words (Lomax, 90210) separated by “OR” mean “also look for ONE OR MORE of these terms.” The quotes around “Costa Rica Dental Team” mean “search for this exact phrase.”

You can fruitfully research other dentists the same way. When I was doing this back in 2010, I would copy-and-paste all the testimonials I found on a particular dentist into a single document for later consideration. A single testimonial—either good or bad—about a particular dentist doesn’t mean much, but if you can assemble reports from many different patients, you can have an informed view of that dentist.

I’m a real patient, and I am NOT receiving compensation of any sort for posting this. My email is [this blog.] (By the way, I mentioned in my previous posts that I had a 2,000-word essay about my experiences. I don’t have it any longer—my computer crashed last year.)

I will post again next year--or sooner, if something happens to my teeth or crowns.

Buena Suerte!

-dave

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