Dental work in Malaysia

Dental is usually not covered on your insurance plan here in Malaysia. And in our case it is not, so we have to pay out of pocket.

I just went through the experience of having a ceramic crown put on one of my upper back teeth recently. The experience was like this.... in October we were referred by an expat living in Seremban to go to a certain dentist in Seremban who is known here to be the ‘best’ and also most expensive (don’t want to cut costs here). The two dentist office (a father and son) were schooled overseas. The dentist we went to graduated from a California dental school and is currently a member of the American Dental Association and Calfornia State Licensed Dental Surgeon (many dentists here are trained outside of Malaysia but it is less common for them to continue to hold licenses overseas, I think). The office reception room looked like it was still in the 70s but the work rooms had new equipment and it was extremely clean. R and I went for our teeth cleaning which was 125 RM per person. The job was fine, no pain and, well, good enough. Better than the experiences I had in the middle east. The dentist also took an xray of my bad tooth which cost 85 RM.

We scheduled the tooth work for the beginning of January. So when I went back recently, the dentist took off the existing crown and made an imprint for the new tooth. He put on a temporary tooth which was white on the exposed part and some blue plastic material on the inside and told me the crown would be ready in one week. One day later the blue had fallen out and I was back there to get it replaced; I thought this blue material was very cheap and I felt like I couldn't bite on that side of my mouth for the whole replacement process. The day the crown was ready I went back and he attempted to put it in, but it didn't fit and I noted it was too dark in color as well. So another one had to be made. This took another week during which I had to wear another temporary crown. Anyway, I went back on Tuesday and he put the new crown in and it looks good and feels ok so far. He surprised me and said he was going to guarantee it for one year. The whole procedure cost 1,500 RM for a nice looking white molded ceramic crown.