Tijuana, Mexico has become a popular destination for dental tourism over the past decade. With its close proximity to the United States border, top-quality dentists, and affordable prices, thousands flock to Tijuana every year for dental care. This guide covers everything you need to know about getting dental work done as a tourist in Tijuana.
There are many compelling reasons to consider going abroad to Tijuana for your dental care:
Cost savings are one of the main motivators. Dentistry in Tijuana can cost anywhere from 30-75% less than the U.S. Some Tijuana dentists charge as little as $200 for a dental crown compared to $1000 or more in the U.S. Common procedures like dental implants, veneers, and root canals can all be done for a fraction of what they would normally cost.
| Procedure | Cost in USA | Cost in Tijuana | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dental Implant | $4500 | $1400 | Over 65% |
| Porcelain Veneers | $2000 | $500 | 75% |
| Dental Crown | $1300 | $200 | 85% |
Top dental clinics in Tijuana invest heavily in state-of-the-art technology and use high-quality materials sourced from Germany and the USA. Digital panoramic x-rays, intraoral cameras, 3D CT scans, laser dentistry, and CAD/CAM milling machines are commonly used.
Given the high volumes of patients, there is generally little or no wait time for appointments at dental clinics in Tijuana. Whereas securing an initial consult and then waiting 4-6 weeks for an available slot is common in the USA, in Tijuana you can often walk in and get treated immediately.
Many Tijuana dental clinics and Tijuana dentists focus on providing cosmetic and restorative dental treatments for medical tourists. As a result, they have specialized expertise in these areas that typical U.S. dentists may lack.
Since you are already traveling to Mexico for dental care, you can extend your stay and relax or enjoy Baja California's beautiful destinations and tourist attractions. Make your necessary dental treatments into a pleasant holiday.
Over the past decade, Tijuana has developed state-of-the-art dental clinics catering specifically to foreign dental tourists. These high-tech clinics meet and even surpass USA standards of care with English-speaking dentists educated abroad. Top clinics include:
No matter what type of dental care you need, there is sure to be a specialized Tijuana dentist with advanced skills and technology to meet your needs.
While choosing a top Tijuana dental clinic is important, there are other key things to know in planning your dental tourism trip:
Don't just choose the cheapest dentist or dental clinic in Tijuana. Check credentials, verify licenses, read reviews from prior dental tourists, and ask lots of questions before settling on a dentist. This will help avoid disappointments.
Have dental records, bite molds, x-rays, and intraoral pictures sent from your home dentist before your trip. This allows the Tijuana dentist to make an accurate diagnosis and customize the treatment plan.
Get comprehensive price lists and understand exactly what is included in quoted fees. Make sure to account for follow-ups and dental lab costs for crowns or bridges. Many clinics offer guarantees if treatment fails within 5 years.
Ask what forms of payment are accepted before arriving. Most accept cash, credit card, and wire transfers. Some may only take USD cash payments. Never pay 100% upfront without an itemized list.
Book flights/transport to San Diego and hotel stay near the border beforehand. If doing extensive treatment, plan to stay overnight in Tijuana close to your dental clinic at least one night.
Before leaving, have your Tijuana dentist explain aftercare required, pain management, dietary restrictions, and follow-up schedule. Follow instructions closely once home for optimal results.
As long as proper precautions are taken in choosing a top dental clinic with accredited Tijuana dentists, having dental work abroad can save tremendous time, money and hassle.
To give you an idea of the potential cost savings, here are average prices charged by top dental clinics in Tijuana:
| Dental Services | Average Cost |
|---|---|
| Routine Exam, X-rays & Cleaning | $30-50 |
| Tooth Extraction | $70-100 |
| Root Canal Treatment | $250-350 |
| Dental Implant Surgery (per tooth) | $1000-1300 |
| Implant-Supported Dentures (per arch) | $1100-1500 |
| Dental Veneers (per tooth) | $250-500 |
| Dental Crowns (per unit) | $250-400 |
| Full Mouth Restoration (depending on plan) | $3000-7000 |
Keep in mind that these prices can vary depending on materials used and can be higher if more work than expected is required. Be sure to get an itemized treatment plan from your Tijuana dentist.
If considering dental tourism in Tijuana, follow these steps to find a top clinic and Tijuana dentist:
Doing your homework before choosing where to get dental care in Tijuana will set you up for success and savings.
Medical and specifically dental tourism into Mexico has exploded in recent years. It is estimated over 1 million Americans crossed into Mexico solely for affordable dental care in 2022. With costly procedures in the US out of reach for many uninsured or underinsured households, the incentives to travel abroad for dental care remains extremely strong.
Tijuana provides the most cost-effective quality dental care due to:
Until meaningful dental insurance reform takes place in the US, dental tourism is projected to keep expanding by leaps and bounds in popular destinations like Tijuana.
If you have significant dental needs and want to realize massive savings potential, here is a checklist to get started with dental tourism in Tijuana:
By being proactive and doing your homework to find an exceptional Tijuana dentist, you can save thousands of dollars while getting exceptional dental care.
Yes - thousands of Americans and Canadians routinely visit Tijuana for safe, affordable dental care. Top clinics exceed US dental and health safety standards. However, always vet credentials, accreditations, and reviews before choosing a Tijuana dentist.
Most accept cash (USD or pesos), major credit/debit cards, bank wire transfers, and some even accept cryptocurrency or payments through apps. Always confirm what forms of payment are accepted before your appointment.
Crossing into Tijuana is simple for those with valid passports, SENTRI cards, or border crossing cards. Most top dental clinics provide convenient pickup/drop-off services at the San Diego airport and border too.
Yes, Tijuana dentists can provide anesthetics during treatments and write prescriptions for strong pain medications to bring back home if required by your treatment plan. Be sure to inquire ahead of time.
You won't have language problems in top Tijuana dental clinics, as nearly all dentists and staff are fluent English speakers. But bringing a friend who speaks Spanish is useful should finer details need clarification.
While weekday appointments are typical, most dental centers have weekend, evening, and 24/7 emergency dental hours available. Just confirm timing that works for your schedule before booking travel.
Finding answers to any outstanding questions will give you confidence to move forward with your Tijuana dental tourism plans.
Tijuana has rightfully earned a reputation as one of the most popular destinations for safe, affordable dental care outside the United States. By partnering with a top dental clinic staffed by expert Tijuana dentists, you can realize thousands in cost savings while transforming your smile.
Whether you need extensive restorative work, dental implants, or a smile makeover, dental tourism to Mexico promises accessible, high-quality dentistry at a fraction of the price. And combining your dental trip with enjoying Baja California's sights, food, and culture makes for an unforgettable experience.
Do your research, ask the right questions, and take advantage of world-class dentistry to change your life and smile. Visit Dental Departures to start planning your Tijuana dental vacation today! Click here to learn more Crossborder travel Tijuana
Having a beautiful smile is certainly something many of us strive for.. Visiting a dental clinic in Tijuana, Mexico can be a great way to achieve that goal.
Posted by on 2023-11-28
Tijuana dentistry is a form of dental care that takes place in Mexico, near the border with the United States.. The primary benefit of this type of care is its affordability, as it can be significantly cheaper than American dentistry.
Posted by on 2023-11-28
Traveling to Tijuana for your dental needs can be an incredibly rewarding experience.. Aside from the obvious cost benefits, there are numerous other advantages that can make a trip south of the border worthwhile.
Posted by on 2023-11-28
Are you looking for a way to save money on your dental care?. Look no further than Tijuana, Mexico!
Posted by on 2023-11-28
Tijuana | |
|---|---|
 | |
|
Flag Coat of arms | |
| Nickname: Gateway to Mexico | |
| Motto: Aquí empieza la patria ("The fatherland begins here") | |
Tijuana Location of Tijuana within Baja California Show map of Baja CaliforniaTijuana Tijuana (Mexico) Show map of MexicoTijuana Tijuana (North America) Show map of North America | |
| Coordinates: 32°31′30″N 117°02′0″W / 32.52500°N 117.03333°W / 32.52500; -117.03333 | |
| Country | Mexico |
| State | Baja California |
| Municipality | Tijuana |
| Founded | 11 July 1889 |
| Government | |
| • Type | Ayuntamiento |
| • Mayor | Montserrat Caballero Ramírez ( MORENA) |
| Area | |
| • City | 637 km2 (246 sq mi) |
| • Metro | 1,392.5 km2 (537.9 sq mi) |
| Elevation | 20 m (65 ft) |
| Population (2020) | |
| • City | 1,922,523[1] |
| • Rank | 19th in North America 2nd in Mexico |
| • Density | 2,832.5/km2 (7,336/sq mi) |
| • Urban | 2,002,000 (estimated)[2] |
| • Metro | 2,157,853[1] |
| Demonym(s) | Tijuanan (in Spanish) Tijuanense[3] |
| Time zone | UTC−8 (PST) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC−7 (PDT) |
| Postal codes | 22000–22699 |
| Area code | + 52 664/663 |
| Website | www.tijuana.gob.mx |
Despite its popularity as a tourist destination, Tijuana is a hotbed of crime, especially violent crime, due to the extensive presence of organized crime and Mexican cartels. It regularly ranks among the most violent cities by homicide rate. According to Statista in August 2023, Tijuana presently has the second highest homicide rate in the world.[15] The U.S. State Department maintains a travel advisory warning as of September 2023 relating to the city's "non-tourist areas."[16] Incidents involving the murder or kidnapping of foreigners since the 2000s have also sparked travel fears and affected Tijuana's status among international tourists.[17][18] Tijuana traces its modern history to the arrival of Spanish explorers in the 16th century who were mapping the coast of the Californias. Following the division of the Californias after the American Conquest of California, Tijuana found itself located on an international border, giving rise to a new economic and political structure. The city was incorporated on 11 July 1889 as urban development began. The city has served as a major tourist destination since the 1880s. Today, Tijuana is a dominant manufacturing center for North America, hosting facilities of many multinational conglomerate companies. In the early 21st century, Tijuana has emerged as the medical device manufacturing capital of North America and is increasingly recognized as an important cultural Mecca for the border region of The Californias.[14] The city is the most visited border city in the world, sharing a border of about 24 km (15 mi) with its sister city San Diego. More than fifty million people cross the border between these two cities every year. Tijuana is the 47th largest city in the Americas and is the westernmost city in Mexico. According to the 2015 census, the Tijuana metropolitan area was the fifth-largest in Mexico, with a population of 1,840,710,[8] but rankings vary, the city (locality) itself was 6th largest and the municipality (administrative) third largest nationally. The international metropolitan region was estimated at 5,158,459 in 2016,[9] making it the third-largest metropolitan area in The Californias, 19th-largest metropolitan area in the Americas,[10] and the largest bi-national conurbation that is shared between US and Mexico. Tijuana is the second most populous city in Mexico and center of the 6th-largest metro area in Mexico,[11] The city is one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country and rated as a "High Sufficiency" global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.[12][11] As of September 2019[update], the city of Tijuana had a population of 1,810,645, with its metropolitan area containing a population of 2,157,853 as of 2020, an estimated 2,002,000 within the urban area.[13][2] Tijuana[a] is the largest city in the state of Baja California located on the northwestern Pacific Coast of Mexico. Tijuana is the municipal seat of the Tijuana Municipality and the hub of the Tijuana metropolitan area. It has a close proximity to the Mexico–United States border, which is part of the San Diego-Tijuana metro area.
The land was originally inhabited by the Kumeyaay, a tribe of Yuman-speaking hunter-gatherers. Europeans arrived in 1542, when the explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo toured the coastline of the area, which Sebastián Vizcaíno mapped in 1602. In 1769, Juan Crespí documented more details about the area that was later called the Valley of Tijuana. Junípero Serra founded the first mission of Alta California in nearby San Diego. Further settlement took place near the end of the mission era when José María de Echeandía, governor of the Baja California and Alta California, awarded a large land grant to Santiago Argüello in 1829. This large cattle ranch, Rancho Tía Juana, covered 100 km2 (40 sq mi). Although "Tia Juana" means "Aunt Jane" in Spanish, the name was actually an adaptation of the word 'Tihuan' or 'Tijuán' in the Kumeyaay language, the name of a nearby Kumeyaay settlement and whose meaning is disputed. In 1848, as a result of the Mexican–American War with the United States, Mexico lost Alta California. While the majority of the 1,000 Hispanic families living in Alta California stayed on the American side, some moved south to Tijuana to remain inside Mexico, which was now in Baja California as the division between the Californias moved north in between San Diego and Tijuana. Because of this Tijuana gained a different purpose on the international border. The area had been populated by ranchers, but Tijuana developed a new social economic structure which were farming and livestock grazing, plus as a transit area for prospectors. Urban settlement began in 1889, when descendants of Santiago Argüello and Augustín Olvera entered an agreement to begin developing the city of Tijuana. The date of the agreement, 11 July 1889, is recognized as the founding of the city. Tijuana saw its future in tourism from the beginning. From the late 19th century to the first few decades of the 20th century, the city attracted large numbers of Californians coming for trade and entertainment. The California land boom of the 1880s led to the first big wave of tourists, who were called "excursionists" and came looking for echoes of the famous novel Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson. In 1911, during the Mexican Revolution, revolutionaries claiming loyalty to Ricardo Flores Magón took over the city for shortly over a month. Federal troops then arrived. Assisted by the "defensores de Tijuana", they routed the revolutionaries, who fled north and were promptly arrested by the United States Army. The Panama-California Exposition of 1915 brought many visitors to the nearby California city of San Diego. Tijuana attracted these tourists with a Feria Típica Mexicana – Typical Mexican Fair. This included curio shops, regional food, thermal baths, horse racing and boxing. The first professional race track opened in January 1916, just south of the border gate. It was almost immediately destroyed by the great "Hatfield rainmaker" flood of 1916. Rebuilt in the general area, it ran horse races until the new Agua Caliente track opened in 1929, several miles south and across the river on higher ground. Legal drinking and gambling attracted U.S nationals in the 1920s during Prohibition. The Avenida Revolución area became the city's tourist center, with casinos and the Hotel Caesar's, birthplace of the Caesar salad. In 1925, the city by presidential decree changed its name to ciudad Zaragoza, but its name reverted to Tijuana in 1929. In 1928, the Agua Caliente Touristic Complex was opened, including hotel, spa, dog-track, private airport, golf course and gambling casino. A year later, the new Agua Caliente Racetrack joined the complex. During the eight years it operated, the Agua Caliente hotel, casino and spa achieved a near mythical status, with Hollywood stars and gangsters flying in and playing. Rita Hayworth was discovered there. Musical nightclub productions were broadcast over the radio. A singer known as "la Faraona" got shot in a love-triangle and gave birth to the myth of a beautiful lady ghost. Remnants of the Agua Caliente casino can be seen in the outdoor swimming pool and the "minarete" (actually a former incinerator chimney) nearby the southern end of Avenida Sanchez Taboada, on the grounds of what is now the Lázaro Cárdenas educational complex. In 1935, President Cárdenas decreed an end to gambling and casinos in Baja California, and the Agua Caliente complex faltered, then closed. In 1939, it was reopened as a junior high school (now, Preparatoria Lázaro Cárdenas). The buildings themselves were torn down in the 1970s and replaced by modern scholastic architecture. With increased tourism and a large number of Mexican citizens relocating to Tijuana, the city's population grew from 21,971 to 65,364 between 1940 and 1950. With the decline of nightlife and tourism in the 1950s, the city restructured its tourist industry, by promoting a more family-oriented scene. Tijuana developed a greater variety of attractions and activities to offer its visitors. In 1965, the Mexican federal government launched the Border Industrialization Program to attract foreign investment. Tijuana and other border cities became attractive for foreign companies to open maquiladoras (factories), and the Tijuana economy started to diversify. Manufacturing jobs attracted workers from other parts of Mexico and the city's population grew from less than half a million in 1980 to almost 1 million in 1985. In 1972, work began on the first concrete channeling of the Tijuana River; previously the river would flood across a wide plain east and southeast of downtown, inundating an area of cardboard and metal shacks called Cartolandia (“Paperland”). The project removed the shacks and added 1.8 million sq. m. of usable land, on which the Zona Río was built. With the 1981 opening of the Plaza Río Tijuana mall and the 1982 Tijuana Cultural Center (CECUT), Zona Río became the new commercial center of a modern Tijuana, and with its new boulevards with monument-filled glorietas (roundabouts), reminiscent of the grand Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, the city created the new image and allure of a modern, large city, rather than just a border town focused on tourism and vice. In 1994, PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated in Tijuana while making an appearance in the plaza of Lomas Taurinas, a neighborhood nestled in a valley near Centro. The shooter was caught and imprisoned, but doubts remain about who the mastermind might have been. After 9/11, tighter US border controls resulted in hours-long waits to return to the US. The number of US visitors dropped sharply due to this factor, as well as subsequent drug violence. Around 2008, thousands of Tijuana's elite bought houses in and moved to Bonita and Eastlake in Chula Vista, California, to escape violence, kidnapping and other crimes taking place during that period. An article in The Los Angeles Times reported that the emigration to San Diego County has transformed the demographic and cultural character of some cities to a degree. In recent years, Tijuana has become an important city of commerce and migration for Mexico and US. In spite of the violence and border crossing issues, the city has received a large number of tourists from US, China, Japan and the south of Mexico. Thanks to the realization of cultural and business festivals, the city has improved its image before the world, standing out as a competitive city for investment. Currently, the commercial and business sector is committed to the boom in the gastronomic industry, craft beer, entertainment, and real estate, as well as medical tourism, to attract visitors and investors.[citation needed]
The cost of dental treatments in Tijuana are typically much lower than those offered in major cities, as much as 70% cheaper.
Generally speaking, there are no more significant risks associated with travelling to Mexico for dental treatment than going abroad for any other medical procedure. However, it is important to research the qualifications and experience of the dentist before booking a procedure.
Depending on traffic, it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or more by car from the US border into Tijuana for dental treatment.