What a consultation actually involves
Forty minutes, three records and a written plan. What we do, what we do not do, and why nothing is started on the day.
People arrive at a first orthodontic appointment expecting either a sales pitch or a set of braces, and it is neither. It is a diagnostic appointment. By the end of it we know what is wrong, in millimetres, and you know what it would take to fix it and what that would cost.
The records
Three of them, and all three are included in the fee.
Your records
- Photographs — face and intra-oral, twelve in all, taken square rather than flatteringly.
- An intra-oral scan of both arches. No impression material.
- A lateral cephalogram, which is a side-on radiograph used to measure the jaws against each other rather than the teeth against each other.
The cephalogram is the one people query, because it is the one that involves a radiograph. It is taken because a fault that looks dental is sometimes skeletal, and the treatment for those two things is not the same. Straightening teeth over a jaw discrepancy produces a result that looks acceptable for two years and then does not.
The space analysis
This is the part worth staying awake for. We measure the width of your teeth, we measure the length of your arch, and we subtract. If the answer is negative, that is your crowding, and it is a number rather than an opinion. Under about four millimetres we can usually create the room without taking anything out. Above it, we are having a conversation about extractions, and you deserve to have that conversation at the start rather than at month six.
“How many millimetres short am I, and what are you going to do to find that space?” Any orthodontist can answer that in one sentence. If the answer is vague, ask again.
What we do not do
We do not fit anything on the day. We do not quote a treatment time to the week — the biology runs at about a millimetre a month and it varies between people by more than any appliance does. And we do not send the plan by text message: it goes out in writing, within three working days, with the fee on it.
When the answer is no
Two or three times a month the plan says that treatment is not worth what it would cost. A midline off by a millimetre and a half. A mild rotation on a lower incisor that nobody but you will ever see. An adult case where the honest route is jaw surgery and you have already decided you do not want jaw surgery. That is not a wasted appointment and it is not a wasted sixty-five pounds — it is the appointment doing its job.
Book a consultation
£65, including all three records and a written plan. Self-refer, or ask your dentist to refer you.