Daily Star: Trip to the Dentist in Sunny Bulgaria

As someone on his first health holiday that was when my smile started to fade.

"It's very close to the nerve - you may feel a little pain."

That was when my smile packed its bag and headed for the airport.

But I needn't have worried.

Ninety minutes later in the steady hands of oral surgeon Dr Radostin Lezunov I was pain - and rotten tooth - free.

An hour later - with seven stitches in my jaw - I was on a walking tour of Bulgarian capital Sofia.

Another 60 minutes down the line and I was sipping an ice cold glass of Burgas 63 - a fruit brandy popular in eastern Europe.

Granted, a trip to the dentist in Bulgaria may not rank highly on the dream holiday list.

But health tourism is rocketing among Brits with 150,000 people a year taking trips abroad for low cost medical treatment while topping up their tans.

And Bulgaria is fast-emerging as a front-runner of sun and surgery destinations.

The former communist state gets more sunshine a year than most of Italy, Croatia and Turkey and boasts a string of top beach resorts along its Black Sea coast.

At the same time its high mountains and cold winters make it a skiing and snowboarding hotspot.

It is also home to some of Europe's finest surgeons in dentistry and orthopaedics.

So when I was left with a wobbly lower molar after a blow in the kisser from a microphone boom stand - don't ask - I decided to price the relative cost of having an implant in the UK and Bulgaria. It was a no-brainer.

Various dentists in the UK quoted me up to £4,500 to replace my tooth.

They also warned that the treatment could take months and involve extensive bone-grafting.

Dr Noori, an implant specialist in Sofia, does them for £660 within a week using...