Costa Rica Dental Care

Dental Care in Costa Rica

by Andrew Saxton

I recently had the bad news of needing a little dental work.  More specifically, a filling.  This news came to me after a series of x-rays that I did at a dentist in CIMA hospital a month before.  The office gave me a call letting me know that one tooth in particular looked like it needed immediate attention, so I made an appointment.

Now I don’t make it to the dentist all that often.  In fact, I’m somewhat ashamed to say that this was my first trip to the dentist in around a decade.  I’m lucky that I got away with as little work needed as I did.  Anyhow, it was explained to me that this particular cavity would be borderline on being repairable, and that I may need a root canal.  My dentist explained to me that extra time would be taken to try to avoid that, and to go bit by bit, to the millimeter, so as not to go too deep and take away my chances of avoiding that.

The office of my dentist is extremely clean, as is every office I’ve ever seen at CIMA Hospital.  The entire staff speaks English, and my dentist graduated from the University of Costa Rica (which I recommend finding out about before starting a relationship with any doctor here).  There are differences in the universities here.  I was even able to watch T.V. and have my own remote to watch “The World’s Strongest Man Competition” and some dirt bike racing.  Two hours later, I was told that it looked like things were okay, and that no root canal would be needed.  Hooray for that.  When it came to my bill, I was sure it would be high, since it took so long and was fairly complicated.  I was told that the procedure took longer than expected, so that it indeed would cost more.  However, the extra amount was a paltry $4.00 on top of the original budgeted $75.00U.S.  Amazing.  When you’re used to the United States system of high-way robbery, it’s nice to know that you can go somewhere else and pay much less, for equal, or in my case, even better service.  

Due to the cost factor involved, many people are actually visiting Costa Rica specifically for dental visits, and it’s easy to see why.  A direct flight from Florida right now to San Jose from Orlando on Jet Blue is roughly $200 round trip.  So you can shoot in and out, or pop out to Nosara and make it a “dental-surf vacation”.  It’s for you to decide, but I’ll never get dental work done in the U.S. ever again unless it’s an emergency.