Coming to Scotland again … ‘Turkey Teeth’
GDC has expressed concern about the legality of these events
Dental clinics based in Türkiye are back in Scotland again this year, hosting consultations in Aberdeen, Dumfries, Edinburgh, Elgin and Inverness.
Among the clinics are Papatya Dental, Umut and A-dent. In addition to flooding social media with news of their visits, some have been placing paid-for content on a Scottish news wesbite extolling the virtues of being treated in Türkiye.
The article Beyond ‘Turkey Teeth’: How Accredited Care Is Reshaping Dental Tourism for Scottish Patients, is credited to ‘D.D.S., Ph.D. Özkan Özkaynak, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon and co-founder, Smile Dental Turkey, Antalya’, which describes itself as “The Best Dental Clinic in Turkey — Internationally Accredited”.
“For years, media coverage of overseas dental treatment has focused on dramatic cosmetic transformations and the social media trend that gave the sector its nickname,” he writes. “Much of that coverage was deserved. Cases went wrong, healthy teeth were prepared unnecessarily, and patients came home with problems their own dentists had to resolve.
“Away from those headlines, however, a quieter change has taken place across the Mediterranean dental sector — and Scottish patients travelling today are, for the most part, asking very different questions from those asked five years ago.”
But the General Dental Council (GDC) says these events are potentially illegal because they may involve dentists from Türkiye carrying out assessments on patients even though they are not registered to practise in the UK.
A spokesperson said: “We do have concerns about these events, for two reasons. The first is that it is illegal for anybody who is not a GDC registrant to provide dental treatment in the UK, and that includes assessing patients for treatment to be delivered in another country. We will make that clear to the venues hosting these events and will discourage events of this kind where we can – but ultimately we have powers to prosecute and the courts can impose unlimited fines on conviction.
“But we are also concerned about prospective patients being given advice which may not be in their best interests and which may lead to them getting inappropriate or substandard treatment. We have no powers to regulate dental treatment given in other countries, but we do provide advice on our website about the questions patients should ask themselves before deciding to seek treatment in other countries.”