Health Care and Medical Information – Freaksofcocks.info

Archive for April, 2011

Bargain deals are not limited to groceries, household products or fashion goods any more. Today, even dental care is on sale. But the catch is that you have to cross the international border to buy it.

Dental tourism, as this phenomenon is known, is a close cousin of medical tourism, and can be defined as the act of going to another country for low cost yet top class dental services.

Why go abroad for dental care?

If you have dental insurance benefits from your employer you are among the lucky few. For a lot of people who do not have dental insurance, going to see a dentist can be a big blow on their pockets.

People go abroad for dental care for one of two reasons: because it’s so much cheaper there for the same quality of care that you get at home and because it’s available with no-wait.

The low cost dental care seekers are usually Americans going mainly to Mexico, Costa Rica, or Panama. The no-wait seekers are Canadians and Britons with the former seeking help in Mexico or Central America and the latter traveling to East European countries like Belgium, Hungary, Poland or Turkey. For some dental procedures which tend to be expensive or complicated, Asian countries like India, Thailand and Singapore are becoming hot dental tourism destinations.

Can travel costs outweigh the potential savings?

Possibly, yes. So, you have to plan your trip smartly if you are to save money.

Suppose you are going on business to Costa Rica. While you are there, consider taking advantage of the low cost of dental care in the country and get some imminent dental work done, like professional dental cleaning or teeth whitening or the likes.

But what if you were in need of a full mouth restoration and didn’t exactly have any vacation planned in Thailand in the near future? Well, if you flew from the US to Thailand, had your full mouth restoration there, and spent some time holidaying in the country, you would still end up saving money than if you had had the treatment done in the US at your local dental clinic.

If you have a couple of small and big dental issues to take care of, then it might actually pay to go abroad and solve them in one go. For example: If you had to get dental bonding, root canal treatment, tooth contouring and dental fillings, it may be best if you addressed them all in the same visit.

How do you find a good dental care provider?

Of late many dental clinics have emerged hosting sleek websites and boasting high quality care by top-class dentists but often dental tourists complain of poor jobs at those clinics. So make sure that the dental clinic or dentist you choose doesn’t fall into that category. You do that by inquiring about the dental care provider in question. Word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family help here. Ask about the credentials and experience of the dentist you are considering. Call up the provider and ask them about the equipments and technology they employ. Talking to them will also give you an idea of whether they are capable to handling foreign patients, for example by judging from their conversational skills and willingness to answer your questions.

You can save yourself the hard work of researching, planning, arranging and scheduling your dental care overseas by working with a dental tourism service providing company. Dental tourism firms like Healthbase are specialized firms that connect dental tourists to affordable and top quality dental care providers overseas. They also take care of several other related services like arranging pre-consultation conference calls with the foreign provider, digitizing and transferring your dental and medical records, ensuring that the provider is top-notch, scheduling your appointment at the foreign dental clinic, negotiating the best price for you, acquiring your passport and visa, booking your travel and accommodation, and much more.

You may learn more about the growing trend of dental tourism by visiting http://www.healthbase.com. Healthbase is a dental tourism facilitator committed to providing low cost high quality dental travel services to the global dental care consumer.

Down syndrome is usually diagnosed at birth on the basis of the typical facial features, hypotonia, and single palmar crease. Several serious problems that may be evident at birth or may develop early in childhood include duodenal atresia, congenital heart disease (especially atrioventricular canal defects), and leukemia. The intestinal and cardiac anomalies usually respond to surgery, and the leukemia generally responds to conservative management. Intelligence varies across a wide spectrum. Many people with Down syndrome do well in sheltered workshops and group homes, but few achieve full independence in adulthood. An Alzheimer-like dementia usually becomes evident in the fourth or fifth decade and, for those who survive childhood, accounts for a reduced life expectancy. Studies addressing the risk and severity of dementia in relation to the apolipoprotein E genotype have had conflicting results. Cytogenetic analysis should always be performed—even though most patients will have simple trisomy for chromosome 21—to detect unbalanced translocations; such patients may have a parent with a balanced translocation, and there will be a substantial recurrence risk of Down syndrome in future offspring. The presence of a fetus with Down syndrome can be detected in the early second trimester through screening maternal serum for -fetoprotein and certain hormones (“multiple marker screening”) and by detecting increased nuchal thickness on fetal ultrasound. The risk of bearing a child with Down syndrome increases exponentially with the age of the mother at conception and begins a marked rise after age 35. By age 45 years, a mother has one chance in 40 of having an affected child. The risk of other conditions associated with trisomy also increases, because of the increased predisposition of older oocytes to nondisjunction during meiosis. There is little risk of trisomy associated with increased paternal age. However, older men do have an increased risk of fathering a child with a new autosomal dominant condition. But because there are so many distinct conditions, the chance of fathering an offspring with any given one is extremely small.