Within the dental tourism industry of Costa Rica, the New Smile Dental Group stands out as one of the pioneering and most successful clinics in our country. The New Smile Dental Group is unique in the sense that it operates in a way that fully supports the interests and well-being of dental tourists.

Located about 11 miles away from the Juan Santamaria International Airport (SJO), the New Smile Dental Group has developed a process intended to make the dental tourism experience as pleasant as possible. This process was designed and implemented by Dr. Mario Bonilla, whose chosen career path illustrates how his professional formation led him to become an important leader in the field of dental tourism.

Dr. Bonilla is fluent in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese. His first exposure to language learning took place in the United States, specifically at Tulane in New Orleans, which also happens to be the alma mater of President Luis Guillermo Solis. Dr. Bonilla would later obtain a dental surgery degree at the prestigious Universidade Paulista (UNIP) in 1993, but not before completing basic courses in endodontics at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (São Paulo State University) in Brazil. It is interesting to note that Dr. Bonilla was appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to serve as Consul of Costa Rica in Brazil during this time.

In the late 1990´s, Dr. Bonilla started his training in Valplast Flexible Partials system in the United Sates, which he completed in 1998. In that same year, he returned to Costa Rica and introduced this advanced dentures system. In 1999, Dr. Bonilla founded his own private dental practice, which he has grown into today’s New Smile Dental Group.

In 2008 and 2009, Dr. Bonilla traveled to the OCO Biomedical Corporate Headquarters, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the purpose of completing implantology courses in the “immediate load dental implants technique;” since then, Dr. Bonilla has performed between 100 to 125 implants per month, which are placed with flapless techniques resulting in  minimal invasive surgeries.

These days, Dr. Bonilla is a member in good standing of the American Dental Association, the American Academy of Implant Dentistry, and the International Congress of Oral Implantologists. He was a keynote speaker at Condenteco Congress in Guatemala in 2010.