How the data works
Methodology
A transparent account of how cases are collected, reviewed, and aggregated into country safety records. If you plan to cite our data, read this first.
Case collection
Cases are submitted via the public submission form. Submitters provide structured data (treatment type, country, cost, severity, complications) plus a free-text account. Submission is open to any patient; no account is required.
We also ingest reports from third-party sources (online forums, news) and tag them with
submission_type = crawled. Crawled cases are held to a higher corroboration
standard before publication and are never auto-published.
Moderation
Every submitted case enters a moderation queue. A human reviewer checks each case for:
- Minimum plausibility — does the account describe a real dental procedure in a plausible way?
- Absence of personally identifiable information about third parties (other than the clinic name, if provided)
- Absence of defamatory or legally problematic content
Moderation does not verify clinical accuracy. We cannot confirm treatment dates, costs, or medical outcomes. A published case represents what the submitter reported, not a clinically verified record.
Cases that fail moderation are rejected with a reason code. Submitters may re-submit with corrections.
Safety score
Each country receives a safety score computed from the approved case database. The score is a composite of four weighted components:
| Component | Weight | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Negative outcome rate | 35% | Share of cases with outcome_type = negative |
| Average severity | 30% | Mean severity score (1–5 scale) across all cases |
| Severe case rate | 20% | Share of cases with severity 4 or 5 |
| Remedial cost burden | 15% | Normalised average remedial cost (USD) among cases requiring remediation |
The composite score is scaled to 0–10 (10 = best reported outcomes). Scores are converted to letter grades: A (≥8.0), B (6.0–7.9), C (4.0–5.9), D (2.0–3.9), F (<2.0). Countries with fewer than 5 approved cases receive an N/A grade.
Severity scale
| Score | Label | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Minor | Cosmetic disappointment, no clinical harm, no follow-up required |
| 2 | Moderate | Discomfort or aesthetic failure requiring local follow-up |
| 3 | Significant | Clinical complication (infection, failure) requiring treatment |
| 4 | Severe | Substantial harm — nerve damage, bone loss, hospitalisation |
| 5 | Critical | Life-threatening or permanently disfiguring outcome |
Treatment taxonomy
Treatment categories and complication types use a closed taxonomy defined at launch and versioned. Submitters select from a controlled list; free-text descriptions are captured separately. This allows consistent aggregation across submissions over time.
Data freshness
Country statistics are recomputed whenever a new case is approved for a given country. All figures shown on country profile pages reflect the live approved case database at the time of page load. Stats displayed in published articles are accurate as of the article's publish date and are not retroactively updated.
Selection bias
Our database skews toward negative outcomes. Patients who had uneventful treatment are less likely to seek out and submit a report. This means our negative outcome rates are higher than the true population rate for a given country or treatment.
We do not adjust for this bias in published statistics. The appropriate interpretation of our data is: "among patients who reported to us, X% had a negative outcome" — not "X% of all dental tourists to this country have a negative outcome."
We include positive and mixed outcomes in our taxonomy to partially counteract this bias. Submitters are encouraged to report good outcomes too.
Corrections policy
If a clinician, clinic, or affected party can demonstrate a material factual error in a published case, we will investigate and correct or retract. Use the right-of-reply link on the relevant case, or contact us via the details in our terms.