Manoj Parmar works:
Monday and Wednesday at Moseley
Tuesday and Thursdays at Barnt Green
Fridays at Blythe Valley Park
Dipesh Parmar works:
Monday and Fridays at Blythe Valley Park
Tuesdays and Thursdays at Moseley
Wednesdays at Barnt Green
If you have spent any time on TikTok or Instagram in the last few years, you have seen the before-and-afters. A set of bright, even teeth, a week abroad, and a price that makes UK dentistry look absurd.
It is a fair thing to look into, and plenty of people who come to see us have already looked — some have already been. What is worth knowing before you book is what the treatment actually is, because the word most often used to describe it is usually the wrong one.
“Turkey teeth” is generally talked about as veneers. In most cases, what is actually fitted is crowns.
The difference is not a technicality. It is the whole decision.
A veneer is a thin shell bonded to the front surface of a tooth. As the Oral Health Foundation puts it, “a small amount of enamel is removed from the front of the tooth.” A crown is different: it covers the whole tooth, and to make room for it the tooth has to be reduced on every side. Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust describes a crown as fitting “over a tooth that has been re-shaped by the dentist”, and notes that veneers “usually involve removal of some tooth structure but not as much as for a crown.”
How much more? Writing in the British Dental Journal in 2023, Professor Martin Kelleher described patients losing “up to 30% of their sound tooth structure” for multiple ceramic veneers, or “up to two-thirds of their invaluable load-bearing structure” for full-coverage crowns. Those figures track laboratory measurements of preparation designs published in the Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry, which found veneer preparations removed between roughly 3% and 30% of the tooth’s crown, and full-coverage crown preparations between 63% and 72%.
Two-thirds of a healthy tooth, on every tooth treated, permanently. That is the part the price comparison does not capture.
Honestly: it depends on the clinic, and no UK regulator has issued a blanket statement on it. What we can point to is this. When the British Dental Association surveyed 1,000 UK dentists in 2022, 86% had treated patients with problems after treatment abroad — and 87% named crowns as the treatment most likely to need follow-up work, ahead of implants.
And in a 2025 British Dental Journal review of how UK newspapers cover dental tourism, one NHS dentist quoted in that coverage put it plainly: patients “talk about veneers – mouldings bonded to the front of a tooth – but in reality, they are crowns, meaning much more aggressive tooth reduction.” That is one clinician’s account rather than an official position, and we would rather say so than overstate it. But it matches what the profession is reporting.
The practical takeaway is simple and it applies anywhere, including here: ask which one you are being offered, and ask how much tooth will be removed. Any dentist should answer that without hesitating.
Cost, mostly, and access. NHS dentistry has been hard to get hold of in much of the country, and cosmetic work is rarely available on it at all.
The 2025 British Dental Journal review found that 92.4% of UK newspaper coverage of dental tourism appeared in tabloids, and that the reporting tended to shame the patients involved rather than explain the decision they were making. We would rather not add to that. People weighing up a few thousand pounds against a few hundred are making a practical decision, not a vain one.
What we would say is that the decision is easier to make well with the right information in front of you — which is the only thing this article is for.
Crowns are not permanent. Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust puts it at “around 8-10 years” for a crown or veneer that is properly cared for. A 2015 systematic review of single crowns found five-year survival rates between roughly 92% and 97% depending on the material — good figures, but they are five-year figures, and they are for crowns in general rather than for any particular country.
The thing worth thinking about is not the first set. It is the second.
Once a tooth has been reduced for a crown, it needs a crown for the rest of its life. When that crown eventually fails, the options run through the remaining tooth structure — and there is less of it than there was. That is a straightforward consequence of the preparation rather than a criticism of anyone’s work, and it is why the question “what happens in fifteen years?” is worth asking before the first appointment rather than after.
You will read that dentistry in Turkey is unregulated. That is not correct, and it is worth being accurate about.
Turkish dentists must register with a regional chamber of dentists — under Turkish law, a dentist who begins practising independently is obliged to join their provincial or regional chamber within a month. Dental facilities are licensed by Turkey’s Ministry of Health, and clinics treating international patients need a separate health tourism authorisation certificate.
The real difference for you as a UK patient is not the absence of rules. It is jurisdiction.
The General Dental Council regulates every dentist practising in the UK, and its register is public and free to search. Its own advice on treatment abroad is measured: it “can’t guarantee another organisation like us exists in other countries, or even that the standards will be the same as they are here.” What it does not say — and cannot — is that it will act for you if something goes wrong overseas. It has no jurisdiction there.
So the questions to ask are procedural rather than patriotic:
The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh’s Faculty of Dental Surgery, writing in March 2025, recommended that “all patients consider dental tourism very carefully”, noting that a quick-fix approach “may be unnecessarily invasive in relation to the underlying dentition”. That is the balanced version, and we would put it the same way.
Come and be seen. That is genuinely all there is to say about it.
We look at a lot of work done elsewhere, in this country and abroad, and nobody gets a lecture for it. Bring whatever records, scans and receipts you have, ideally in English. If everything is fine, we will tell you that. If something needs attention, you will get a written assessment and a plan, and you decide what to do with it.
It is worth knowing that NHS dentistry can assess and stabilise a problem — pain and infection will be dealt with — but will not usually replace privately funded cosmetic work. Rebuilding is a private cost, wherever the original treatment happened.
If the goal is a change in the colour or shape of your teeth, crowns are one option among several, and often not the first one to reach for. Depending on the case, whitening, composite bonding or orthodontic treatment can achieve a lot with far less intervention — and they leave the door open in a way that a prepared tooth does not.
Where veneers are the right answer, porcelain veneers take a fraction of the tooth that a crown does.
We are a dental practice in Birmingham and Solihull, so we are not a neutral party in this and we are not pretending to be. What we would say is: have the conversation before you commit to anything, here or anywhere. A proper assessment will tell you what your case actually needs, and that information is just as useful if you go on to travel as it is if you stay.
It is a nickname rather than a treatment, and it usually refers to a full set of crowns fitted over teeth that have been filed down, producing a very white and very even smile. It is often described as veneers, but a veneer covers only the front surface of a tooth while a crown covers the whole of it. The two involve very different amounts of tooth removal, so it is worth establishing which one is being offered before anything else.
Usually zirconia or another all-ceramic material, sometimes porcelain bonded to metal. The material matters less than the preparation underneath it — a well-made crown on a heavily reduced tooth is still a heavily reduced tooth.
Crowns are not permanent anywhere. Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust gives around 8 to 10 years for a well-cared-for crown or veneer, and published five-year survival rates for single crowns sit between roughly 92% and 97% depending on material. Those are general figures rather than country-specific ones. The more useful question is what happens when the crown needs replacing, because the tooth underneath will have less structure left than it started with.
No dental treatment is risk-free, and that is true here as much as anywhere. Turkey has skilled clinicians and regulated clinics — dentists must register with a regional chamber and facilities are licensed by the Ministry of Health. The risks that come with travelling are mostly structural rather than clinical: a compressed timetable, package terms that may exclude aftercare, travel insurance that is often invalidated by planned treatment, and a longer and harder route to redress. The clinical risk worth weighing separately is how much healthy tooth is removed, which is a question for any provider in any country.
Many will, including us, and it is a common enough situation that nobody needs to feel awkward about it. NHS dentistry can assess and stabilise a problem such as pain or infection, but will not normally replace privately funded cosmetic work — rebuilding is a private cost wherever the original treatment was done. Bring any records, scans and receipts you have, ideally in English.
Active gum disease should be treated and stable before any cosmetic work is planned, wherever it is being done. Crowns and veneers placed over untreated gum disease sit on a moving foundation, and the margins where the restoration meets the tooth are exactly where problems develop. Any proper assessment should include a periodontal examination first. A plan that skips that step is a warning sign anywhere.
The headline price is usually lower. Whether the total is depends on what the package excludes — flights, insurance, any additional treatment found at the chair, and aftercare once you are home. The British Dental Association’s 2022 survey of UK dentists found 65% of those who had treated problems after treatment abroad put the remedial cost at £500 or more, and 51% at over £1,000. Those are figures for cases that went wrong rather than an average outcome, and the survey is now four years old, so treat it as an indication of scale rather than a forecast.
