Pensioner left with screwdriver lodged in lung after being forced to go to Hungary for cheaper dental treatment

Mary Reilly went abroad to have £15,000 worth of work after private dentists in the UK quoted her twice the price.

But the deal turned into a nightmare when a dental screwdriver was dropped down her throat - prompting an emergency trip to hospital.

Dental tourist Mary Reilly went on a 6,000 mile quest to get her teeth fixed only for a bungling dentist to drop screwdriver into her lung

Mrs Reilly,69 revealed her ordeal days after a a team of Hungarian dentists offered consultations while touring the UK in an inflatable tent.

The pensioner was driven straight to hospital when staff realised the half-centimetre screwdriver had been lost.

She was later offered just £100 in compensation and still needed a further trip to Budapest to complete the work on her dental implants.

Even then Mrs Reilly ,  from Lincolnshire, wasn't satisfied and had little choice but to pay another £2,200 for an English dentist to finish the remedial treatment.

She said: "I was a naive when I went to Hungary. I didn't do enough research. I had to pay my own expenses and didn't have a proper consultation.

"I went along with it too much rather than saying: 'This isn't on.' You need to know exactly what treatment you're having done before you go." 

Mrs Reilly's trip to the Vitcal Centre in Budapest at the end of 2006 was arranged by Dentistry Abroad, which no longer works with the clinic.

Company spokesman Szilvi Sipocz said yesterday: "This was stupidity on the part of the clinic, and it just shows why we stopped dealing with them." 

Last week Britain's health system was condemned as "sick" as patients abandoned by the NHS queued in a farmyard to see Hungarian dentists.

The bizarre spectacle in the tiny rural village of Aubourn, near Lincoln, marked the launch of a seven-day tour of the north of England by the set-up.

Scores of patients received an initial consultation and quote from Hungarian Dental Travel - a firm not connected to Mrs Reilly's treatment.

In a move that fuelled claims of a failing NHS, the HDT team can massively undercut prices in the UK - even when including travel to Hungary.

The Department of Health claims it is investing 200-million pounds in NHS dentistry this year and denies there has been a "mass exodus" of NHS dentists.