Do it yourself
Check a dentist's licence yourself
This takes about two minutes and you should do it for any dentist you are considering, including the ones on this site. A verification you performed yourself is worth more than a badge you were shown.
The federal licence
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Ask the dentist for two things: the exact name as it appears on their cédula profesional, and the number. A licensed dentist will hand these over without hesitating. Hesitation here is itself informative.
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Go to the Registro Nacional de Profesionistas: cedulaprofesional.sep.gob.mx .
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Enter the name in three parts. Nombre is the first name. Apellido paterno is the father's surname. Apellido materno is the mother's surname. Mexican names carry both, and getting the order wrong is the number one reason a real dentist appears not to exist.
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Check three things in the result: the number matches what you were given, the profession is a dental one (Cirujano Dentista, or a dental specialty), and the name matches the person you are actually going to see.
Specialty certification
If the dentist is presenting themselves as a specialist rather than a general dentist, ask which council certified them and for the certificate number, then ask for the expiry date. Certificates run about five years and have to be renewed. An expired certificate is common enough not to be alarming on its own, but you want to know rather than assume.
For oral and maxillofacial surgery specifically, the certifying body sits under CONACEM, which publishes a searchable directory of certified specialists including the validity dates. Other dental specialties certify through their own councils.
The clinic
The clinic holds its own sanitary licence, issued by COFEPRIS, and it is separate from the dentist's personal licence. Ask to see it. A clinic set up for international patients will have it framed on the wall.
If you find a problem with a listing here
Report it. Correcting a listing beats defending one. Every profile shows the date the check was performed, so if the registry has changed since then, that gap is visible rather than hidden.
Questions patients actually ask
Is the Mexican licence registry really public?
Yes. The Registro Nacional de Profesionistas is published by the Secretaría de Educación Pública and is public by order of the national transparency institute. Anyone can search it, from anywhere, at no cost.
The site is in Spanish. Does that matter?
Not much. You need three fields: nombre (first name), apellido paterno (father's surname) and apellido materno (mother's surname). Mexican names carry both surnames, and the registry expects them in that order, which is the single most common reason a search comes back empty.
I searched and found nothing. Does that mean the dentist is a fraud?
Not necessarily, and this is worth being careful about. The most common causes of an empty result are the two surnames being entered in the wrong order, an accent or spelling variation, or a professional name that differs from the legal name on the licence. Ask the dentist for the exact name on their cédula and the number, then search again. Only after that does an empty result start to mean something.
What should I do if the number does not match the name?
Do not pay a deposit, and do not travel. A mismatch between a licence number and a name is not a clerical quirk. If it is a dentist listed on this site, report it and the listing gets re-checked and corrected.