Anyone have experiences with this? I am thinking of going to get my braces removed and enjoy some travel while at it.

Honestly I haven't heard much of it from Costa Rica, but I have heard of it in many other places. It seems to be getting increasingly popular, and it's a shame that there is a market for it.

Brace removal is a little unusual though, I thought that that was normally all handled by one dentist.

My dentist had to leave the country. It is very expensive to do here and a lot of dentists won't touch them for fear of liability since they did not do the original work.

That makes sense, you can't change your dentist in the middle of the work that you are getting done, no one will touch you. But what is this medical tourism thing about?

I had a surgery done out of the states and it cost me alot less than it would have if I would have done here in the United States.

I can vouch for the medical/dental system here in Costa Rica, it is quite good. The World Health organization rates the Costa Rican health care system ahead of the US.

That said, if I required something major, I would prefer it done in the US.

But for routine procedures Costa Rica beats the US in almost every category!!!!

My favorite example of how much more practical the system is here: In many Pharmacies they have a Dr on site. If you have something wrong, you walk into the pharmacy, you ask for the Dr., the Dr. consults with you on the spot, you buy your meds and you are on your way in a matter of minutes.

But on topic: There are scores of compitent bi-Lingual dentists in Costa Rica. You can expect to pay about 30% what you would pay in the States!!!!

Medical Tourism is a growing trend among people. As an international travel agent and as per my concern this is exactly demand for medical tourism is developing among people at a good pace. Due to its multi beneficial aspect, more no. of people are going for it. Its good. Especially from central America, we are receiving maximum no of calls for medical tourism.