Prolijo wrote:
Dr. Chen is easily the WORST dentist I've ever been to in my entire life. I will agree that he is extremely solicitous and gentle (concerned about sparing you any pain) but he has VERY shaky hands (not something you want from somebody doing very delicate work in your mouth with a power drill). I also agree that he'll see you at short notice and there's no wait in his office because he doesn't seem to have many patients, but is that necessarily a good sign. I used him to drill out and fill a simple cavity and that filling didn't even stay in my tooth as long as my flight back to the US. I ended up needing to find an emergency dentist to fix Chen's work as soon as I got home.
Sure he's cheaper than the "tourist dentists" but what is your dental health worth? Those so-called "tourist dentists" still charge only a third of what most dentists in the US charge while operating at 1st world standards. If you're getting major work done i suggest you "splurge" a little bit rather than cutting corners and completely cheaping out. And this is coming from someone who those who know me will tell you is something of a cheapskate (e.g. taking the bus from the airport, staying at places like the old Hotel Nuevo Johnson (a $15/nt place), taking meals in the Plaza Venida foodcourt, etc)
Interesting, I see this all the time with professionals, lawyers, doctors, dentists, nobody satisfies 100% of their clients. I was in the mortgage and real estate biz for decades and most of my clients loved me, I made a lot of money for many investor clients, and regular mom n pops liked my honesty and ability to explain things to them, but I had clients who loathed me, usually fools with unrealistic expectations I ended up delivering stern admonishments to and sending them off to someone else, lol.
I didn't see any shaky hands, otherwise I would have been out of there in 2 seconds, but maybe he had a hangover when he worked on you, lol.
I also see his office packed, and he has Tico dentists dealing with Tico patients under him, but he personally handles the gringos.
The reason I went to him, a friend of mine who is quite wealthy brought his mother in her 80's to him for extensive work, and he had a bridge and other work by him and recommended him strongly, plus I had two recent broken teeth and needed to move fast.
I've been to numerous bad, maybe terrible dentists in the USA, I was impressed with him because he got both teeth out, roots and all, no breaks in less than 30 minutes, and I have long curved roots broken by American dentists, and minimum pain to me.
My experience told me, at least in this extraction, he was quite skilled.
But...you have an excellent point, he quoted me $800 for a bridge for both teeth, a steal even in CR, I may go to Costa Rica Dental Team recommended here who had an oral surgeon pull a back molar for $100 and I was extremely satisfied with them as well, doesn't hurt to get two opinions and compare how I feel.
He's old school, no x-rays, he just looked at my teeth and went to work, that may be good or it may be bad, but so far, I feel good about what he did, and if my wealthy friend trusted him with his mother and a ton of work, and by the way, she's still alive and early 90's and reports her teeth he worked on look and feel great, I got that to think about as well, lol.
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