Keeping your appointments

Each visit is a small course correction: we check what has moved, change or adjust what is doing the work, and set the next step. When a visit is missed, the current wire or aligner keeps doing a job that has already finished, and the treatment simply waits. Missed visits are the most common reason treatment runs long.

How a visit fits the plan

A wire, an aligner or an elastic pattern is chosen to do a certain amount of work over a certain number of weeks. Once that work is done, nothing more happens until it is changed. Your appointment is timed for the moment the change is due.

Miss one, and it is not just those weeks lost. The next available slot may be a few weeks away, and some stages have to be repeated if teeth have drifted in the gap.

If you need to move a visit

Life happens. The earlier you tell us, the more likely we can find you another time before your current stage runs out of work to do. A quick message a week ahead is easy; the morning of is hard for everyone.

• Give us as much notice as you can, even if you do not yet know a better day.
• Ask for a similar time of day if school or work is a factor. We keep some early and late slots for exactly that.
• If you cannot make it and have not managed to reach us, come to the next one you can. Do not wait for us to chase.

Common questions