Many dental tourists who plan medical vacations in Costa Rica ask if they should start taking antibiotics prior to their arrival. This question is mostly asked by patients from the United States and Canada, where dental health practitioners have been known to recommend antibiotics to a few categories of patients.

The only rule of thumb in this regard is that antibiotics should be taken if they are currently prescribed. When prospective dental tourists contact their practitioners in Costa Rica, they will be asked if they are taking antibiotic medications and why. At the Flikier Dental Institute in San Jose, dental health professionals do not generally recommend taking antibiotics arbitrarily and without prescriptions; however, there are two situations in which they may recommended patients to visit their doctors and tell them about their upcoming treatments.

Patients with artificial heart valves should tell their primary physicians about their intention of visiting Costa Rica for dental treatment; patients with a history of bacterial endocarditis, an infection of the heart or cardiovascular system, should also tell their doctors about their dental tourism plans. These two patients may be prescribed antibiotics prior to their arrival in Costa Rica.

In the past, patients who had joint replacement surgeries were prescribed antibiotics prior to dental work; however, a new guideline agreed upon by the American Dental Association and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons explains:

“It has been long debated that patients with orthopedic implants, primarily hip and knee replacements, are prone to implant infections from routine dental procedures,” David Jevsevar, MD, MBA, chair of the AAOS Evidence Based Practice Committee, said in a news release. “What we found in this analysis is that there is no conclusive evidence that demonstrates a need to routinely administer antibiotics to patients with an orthopedic implant, who undergo dental procedures.”