Turkey teeth: Britons learn the high cost of a low-price dental treatment

A dental trend that involves travelling abroad to get picture-perfect teeth has left several Britons with serious complications.

BBC has learned that hundreds of dentists in the UK have treated people who were left with painful complications after travelling abroad to get cut-price crowns. This trend has been dubbed “Turkey teeth”.

What are Turkey teeth?

Turkey teeth is a dental trend, made popular by celebrities like Katie Price and Jack Fincham, that involves filing the natural tooth down to a stub before gluing an artificial cap on top. Patients can pick the shape, size and colour of the caps they want. Hoping to get the perfect pearlies, thousands of Britons in the last few years have travelled abroad to avail cut-price crowns.

Why is it called Turkey teeth?

This cosmetic fad gets its name from the practice of travelling to countries like Turkey to get cheaper dental treatment.

The practice has become increasingly popular in the UK, thanks in part to its TikTok fame. BBC reports that the ‘Turkey teeth’ hashtag has touched 130 million views on TikTok.

The report cited the case of Lisa Martyn, a 48-year-old who flew to Turkey for veneers, hoping to get the “perfect smile” before her son’s wedding. Veneers are wafer-thin shells attached to the teeth to improve their appearance. Instead, Martyn was given crowns, where 60 to 70 percent of the tooth is filed down to a stub and a tooth cap is glued on top.

Is it harmful?

Dentists have warned that the treatment can leave patients with serious complications. In the case of Martyn, she has been plagued by excruciating pain and nerve damage since she received crowns in Turkey.

The pain culminated in an infection and abscess. Her only options are implants or dentures, which will cost her more than 2000 euro.

"Financially it's going to cripple me, but that's just the price I have to pay after going to Turkey and filing all my teeth down," she says.

The high cost of cut-price crowns

In the short term, it may seem cheaper to travel abroad for treatment. In the longer run, it could end up costing the patient thousands more in remedial treatments than if the procedure had been carried out by a licensed and trained professional in the first place.

"Our clinic has been inundated over the last couple of years with young people who have been misled by bargain cosmetic dental centres in Turkey,” said the Harley Street Smile Clinic.

“Mislead millennials are committing to a lifetime of unnecessary, expensive and painful treatments as it’s found that many don’t even know what work they’ve had done when going for veneers in Turkey.”

The clinic added that patients are left with the “harsh reality of a lifetime of dental work, costing far beyond the cost of having veneers done in the UK, often our clients have no idea what work they’ve actually had done, or what’s involved in rectifying the issue.”