Hello,

I'm not sure if this is the right forum section to post this but I wanted to start a topic about dentists in Spain.

I had a bad experience yesterday when I went to one of this dental clinics VITALDENT to fix a filling that had fallen down after 13 years in my mouth! I say bad experience because I didn't like the way the personnel worked and the final result to replace the filling was not as expected.

I had done my previous fillings in the USA and some of them still last today 13 years later. But finally I lost one and had to replace it. So I went to the mentioned clinic last week to have an appoinmet for yesterday. It was a filling/reconstruction and the the dentist, a young woman that was not even 30, finished in 20 minutes!! Moreover she was working alone without the help of any higienist or anything. The final job was a very brute filling, bad done to the point that it touched the adjacent teeth so I can not insert the dental floss in between!!! Not to mention the bad yellow colored material used for the filling and the fact that when I arrived home I brushed my teeth and tried used the dental floss, I lost like 2 small little parts the size of sand grains that I didn't know if it was part of my teeth or the filling.

I'm very mad because it is all done and I have the feeling that the filling wont last too much. I payed 48 Euros. One thing I can tell you is that I will not come back to that clinic ever. THe worst experience I have in my life. I just hope I dont get an infection or something because you should see the way the dentist was working.

The "funny" thing is that the clinic director wanted me to do a full treatment for 500 Euros!! Now I am happy I didn't do it.

How I wish my US dentist could be close to me now!!

Anyway.

Can anyone recommend a good Dentist here in Madrid? I have the feeling that I am going to have to go again pretty soon.

Thanks for your time, and if someone can help....

Ian Daniels

http://www.clinicadentalcisne.com/clinicawebF.swf

Warning, he's not cheap, but he's very very good

Estopa1, check out the long thread from a couple years ago called " How are the dentists in Spain? ".

Yours is the second complaint I've read about Vitaldent in the last few years. As I recall, it may have also been about a fallen filling and the Vitaldent in question did not have "Hojas de Reclamación". But in Vitaldent's semi-defense, I haven't found the presumably countless positive reviews of them either. Regardless, Vitaldent is a corporation and so their goal is to make as much money as possible.

You'll find my experience with " Sanitas " in the thread mentioned above. Since then, I've returned to a DIFFERENT Sanitas office and had the same experience: they made a visual inspection of my mouth, said I did NOT need a cleaning (but I insisted since it had been one year - and then I paid for it), and said I had one cavity.

Sanitas is a private company too but they're a private INSURANCE company so, I don't believe, their goal is not to convince the client into useless procedures.

And by the way, I don't have Sanitas insurance! But you can still use their services. You just pay more per procedure since you're not paying the monthly membership fees. I think I paid about 100 Euros total for visit last summer which included the cleaning and filling. The dentists, the two different ones I had, were mature (in their late 40s or 50s), Spanish, and seemed very professional. And while I'm not sure, I'm pretty sure I would've paid more (in cash, without insurance) for the same treatment at a dentist in the USA.

Best of luck! Saludos, MadridMan

Thanks you very much to both of you.

MM, Actually I did read that thread a long time ago. I even posted a reply! but I just forgot about it, so I started this new one. Thanks for pointing that out.

Next time I have to go to the dentist I will probably go to SANITAS or ASISA. My sister had a few cavities and went to ASISA, and they did a very good job in her mouth. If I had just asked her first!!!

I will never ever go to a dental corporation like Vitaldent again. It seems to me that they hire very young and unexperienced (recently graduated from the University) dentists (even under 30) that get a very low salary and use their time in those clinics just to gain experience until they can open their own business in the future.

Thanks again.

I tend to agree with you regarding those streetside dental "clinics" (term here used very loosely) - even though I've never been inside one. Just walking by and seeing all their advertising makes me guess they're more interested in making money. But they are cheap, as I understand it, and may be the only option for some people.

Saludos, MadridMan