Dr. Alejandro Mora Claimed

I’ll mention the positives first which is why I’m giving any stars at all – the staff are fantastic, truly compassionate, kind people. The location is great; everything we needed was close at hand. The problem – one of the doctors, Dr Mora, made serious mistakes then became extremely defensive to the point we didn’t feel confident he could fix them. A week after he did all the prep work and placed 17 temporary crowns in my wife’s mouth, we returned to the clinic so Dr. Mora could place the permanent crowns. He used a tool he called a “reverse hammer” to remove the temporary crowns. In just a few minutes, he’d removed a few of them with just a couple strikes. But, the remaining crowns (that he had placed a week before), wouldn’t budge and I watched with growing concern as he became noticeably frustrated with the lack of progress. The whole time he’s repositioning the tool and hammering away again until my wife was in tears from the pain. She finally asked him why it wasn’t working and if there was another way to remove the remaining temporaries. He said that sometimes they are just stubborn and then decided to numb her mouth and remove them with the drill. Then they came out pretty quickly. By this point, the procedure had already taken quite a bit longer than we were told to expect and it was getting close to 5 pm on a Thursday. We were told that the doctor would be out of the office on Friday. Dr. Mora did a test fitting of the permanent crowns and said the fit was fine then did the final placement. He then did grinding in several places to make the bite more comfortable. By the time he was done, most of the office staff had left for the day and it was apparent that he was eager to leave himself. But, we were happy to have the work complete and trusted that it had been done correctly. Jump to two months later back home in the US and we find out that 12 of the 17 crowns had been placed incorrectly leaving large open margins around the gums. We had two independent dentists assess the work and both recommended that they be replaced. They warned my wife that the poorly placed crowns were causing problems with her gums and that they would fail prematurely within a couple of years. It made me wonder how many of the people who left good reviews actually received poor quality work but don’t yet realize it. We brought their reports with pictures and xrays to Dr. Mora but he denied it was his fault. He did say that if we returned to Costa Rica he would evaluate it himself and replace the problematic crowns if he felt it were necessary. He didn’t offer any explanation how the problem could have occurred or how he would ensure that he could do a better job if we gave him a second chance. We asked for a refund of the failed crowns and he flat-out rejected the idea. So, we learned the hard way that Dr. Mora may do poor quality work knowing that the only way he’ll have to account for it is if we pay thousands more dollars to give him a chance to fix the mistakes he shouldn’t have made in the first place.. Additionally, Dr Fernandez placed three implants. Two of them were drilled down too deep and were impacting my wife’s nerve. She’s got the highest pain tolerance of anyone I know, and she was in terrible pain. The doctors weren’t taking her pain seriously enough. Dr Fernandez did remove one of the implants after I said something (he didn’t seem to believe it when she said it). But even though my wife expressed she was worried the problem might not be completely gone, we were sent home and had to get a US oral surgeon to remove the second one. Our overall experience has been awful and very costly. To be blunt, this clinic’s doctors ruined us financially. I consider going to them to be one of the costliest decisions of my entire life.

Despite the glowing reviews, our experience at Dental Cosmetics Costa Rica was a nightmare. After receiving 3 implants from Dr. Fernandez and 17 crowns from Dr. Mora, 2 implants failed (they were drilled down too deep and compressed my trigeminal nerve which was truly the worst pain I’ve ever experienced) and 12 crowns were improperly done, leading to constant tooth and gum pain and tens of thousands of dollars in additional expenses to correct these problems. We had made a second trip back to Costa Rica just 2 weeks after so the doctors could correct the issues, but the problems were only partially addressed, and I left in barely better shape. Additionally, despite expressing many times how much pain I was in, my concerns were repeatedly dismissed and I kept being told that I’m “very sensitive.” (I’ve had tons of previous dental work including an implant, 8 crowns, extractions, you name it – and never had issues with pain.) We’ve since made multiple attempts to resolve this with the clinic, providing ample evidence and asking for at least 75% of our investment to be refunded. No apology or genuine concern was showed by either of the doctors. They told us we would have to foot the bill to return a third time to their clinic if we wanted any of their help to try and fix the issues. And they’ve since ignored our last message (which I’ll admit was a rather surly message). Any trust we had in these doctors is absolutely gone, and we are left now having to bear the weight of the extraordinary financial burden for the problems they caused. A couple side notes – 1. The clinic’s nurses, US liaison, and receptionist are all wonderful. 2. I’ve never written a bad review before. I understand things don’t always go to plan, and don’t prefer to blast someone publicly. But this situation has been incredibly costly and unfair, and the doctors had multiple opportunities to correct things but did not.