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I'm 19 and live in the north of England. I had braces as a child but not being vane or overly concerned about the long term, I wasn't the best patient and didn't wear the braces as often as I should . However the braces did close the gaps between my teeth and turned my huge overbite to an unsighlty Napolean Dynamite stlye overbite (huge improvement on my previous overbite.)
I'm now starting to save for Orthodontic treatment again as I'm to old for the NHS and my old NHS dentist decided to go private. So I'm wondering on how the price scheme in the UK works and how much I should be saving up. I read that the prices range from £1800 to £3000 depending on the treatment and the deposit is about £1000.
All my teeth seem fine except the front four which are forward giving me an overbite. My chin is kind of unprominent (see pic)
I dont know If I need surgery or not to move my chin forward. My old brace didn't require me to have surgery. My old brace was removable and had to parts, top and bottom. I think the bottom was used to correct my bite. From this information what should I be expecting the price to range from. I was thinking of waiting till I have £1000 in the bank then find an orthodontist and take it from there. Finding an orthodontist is a whole kettle of fish as well, how do you go about approaching them?
With regards to contacting an orthodontist, you could ask your dentist if he can recommend anyone, or you could go to the BOS site here http://www.bos.org.uk/ and search for orthodontists in your area. If you are going private then you can self-refer and simply phone one up and ask for an assessment appointment.
£1800 sounds pretty low for treatment in the UK unless your case is pretty uncomplicated. It's probably likely to be at least 2.5K, and if you need surgery that will be quite a lot extra.
From personal experience, I paid £70 for an assessment appointment which took about half an hour and involved my ortho thoroughly assessing my teeth and bite an taking photographs. It would also have included a detailed treatment plan sent to me so I could decided whether to proceed or not, except for the fact that I liked him so much that I signed up for treatment with him there and then, and put £700 down payment. I then paid the rest off over a year in interest free monthly instalments.
Ive just had my braces put on my uppers only. I had to go private also as I'm 26! The consultation was free, I got ceramic braces and they cost me £1900 upper only, it would have been £2100 if I paid in installments.
I would probably double that cost if you were getting upper and lower done. I went with Orthoworld for my treatment.
What did that make the montly payements, if you dont mind me asking? I'm a student and recieve no grants are anything so all the money funding treatment will be with my part time job. I get about £300 a month so I want to make sure I can afford the monthly payements. This Is why I'm saving up so I'm able to have a pocket of money in the bank.
Being young my teeth are quite movable and the past brace has made them so movable just pressing them makse them move, so I don't think they will be stubern in terms of time taken to move them. I'm unsure about needing surgery as I think that correcting the bite alone may help move my chin forward slightly. So I should expect 2.5K then? I guess I'll try and save till about 1.25K then make aragements to see an orthodontist.
My treatment actually cost a tad over £4000, but the complexity of it was taken into account when my ortho calculated it, if he'd known how many extra setbacks and delays I'd have, he'd probably have charged me more.
My monthly payments over a year were just under £300 because I'd put £700 down before commencing.
Actually you're not necessarily too old for the NHS, they will treat adults but only if you fulfil certain criteria. You'd need a referral from your dentist though and of course you might not be eligible and the waiting lists tend to be long. You can read about the criteria (Index of Treatment Need) here http://www.dentalgain.org/orthodontics.html
I live in an area where its almost impossible to be seen by an NHS dentist. 4 grand is a lot, its more than I earn in a year. I don't mind paying a deposit of about £1000 and then paying monthly about £200 but anything more than 3K is a lot.
Like I said before I should imagine my teeth would move quite quickly, I don't think I would need surgery and I don't think I would have to have any teeth removed. However my front four teeth are "buck teeth" for a lack of a better phase, so I don't know if it would be considered a lot of work or not.
It's great that you've found this site and can suss it out a bit, before you even start treatment!
I'm 39 and I've just started some fairly straight-forward treatment. My top teeth were crowded and wonky. There are no medical reasons why I need treatment, it's just 'cosmetic'.
I've had two teeth extracted to make space (just £39! because fortunately I'm with an NHS dentist here in Wales) and I've now got a mix of ceramic and metal brackets on my top teeth only. My orthodontist thinks it will take about a year, and I'm paying £1400. From what I've read on this website, it seems like many people need more complex treatment than me... and so it can cost quite a lot more. My bottom teeth are crowded too, but you can't see them when I smile and I'm not bothered about having them done.
Also, sometimes the orthodontist can't just treat the top or bottom teeth without doing both. The first orthodontist I saw wanted to do both top and bottom, and quoted me £2800. I think there can be several reasons for this. First, if you move your top teeth, say, you can find that the 'bite' doesn't work any more and your teeth aren't in line with each other. Secondly, most orthodontists are by their nature perfectionists, and they will want to do a complete job! For me, I felt it was worth paying another £80 for a second opinion, and the second orthodontist I saw felt that she could treat just the top teeth and my teeth would still line up.
I guess the monthly payment will depend on how much the total bill is, but also how long the treatment will last. At my orthodontists, they offered a free scheme where you can borrow the money you need from this other company who specialise in this area. You have an interest-free loan, pay the orthodontist 'up front', and repay the loan monthly during the treatment.
I decided not to take out the loan, as fortunately I didn't need to. I have paid half the money up front, and will pay the other half near the end of the treatment.
Hi BellBoy!
I live in London and was referred to my ortho by my dentist. As I am a "bit" over 18 years old... I have to pay. The total cost is £2800 for top and bottom ceramics. There was an £80 consultation fee which included panoramic xrays and moulds. I paid £850 upfront, then £150 at each adjustment (roughly every 4-6 weeks).
I took advantage of an interest free credit card deal which will keep me going till June, when I will take out another and so on till my treatment ends!
I don't know how long it will take - another 20 months? - but I always have access to my ortho and he doesn't charge extra for any "emergency" visits I have to make (reglueing brackets etc..)
Hope this helps. It's an expensive business, but the costs can be spread out. Once the deposit is out of the way, it seems less frightening!
Good luck and keep us all posted!
My treatment is costing £2600 for ceramic uppers and metal lowers. I am paying around £800 up front and then the rest in interest free installments for 13 months.
Although I have saved up for this, I feel guilty about spending so much money on my teeth as I am doing it for cosmetic reasons, and for the second time after having free orthodontic treatment on the NHS in my early teens. My teeth have relapsed and are very crowded now. However, I have been unhappy with my smile for years and it is hard to accept my horrible crowded teeth after having perfectly straight ones for a few years after my first round of braces.
Hope you are able to save up and straighten your smile too, I wish orthodontics wasn't so expensive!!
If money is an issue, you could ask your dentist (private or NHS) for a referral to an NHS orthodontist or dental teaching hospital. You may qualify for free treatment - I did, and am now coming to the end of my treatment after 2½ years in full metal braces and after surgery on both jaws. My treatment has not cost me a penny.
I never thought my teeth were that bad, just a bit crooked - turns out there was all sorts wrong with me! If it saves you a few grand, it can't hurt to investigate the free treatment route, surely?
Braced May 2005
Bimaxillary surgery Aug 2007
Debraced Jun 2008
Meryaten wrote:I completely agree. With your chin and your overjet, you might well be a surgical candidate. Of course, it will depend on the size of the overjet, and what other factors are present of course. I'm not sure I don't see just a little lip incompetency there though.
Good luck to you.
Could you elaborate please? Lip incompetency? The brace I had as a child didn't require me to have surgery and that was on the NHS so i'm not sure. I think I must be borderline or something.
From what I gater I need to save about £800 for the deposit then its about £130 monthly from then on in. If the treatment comes to £4000 does that mean the montly payements will be more or will it mean I will pay £130 monthly for a greater amount of time? I ask this because a £800 deposit is affordbale and monthly payements upto £200 are fine but anything above that is too much.
Another thing, I gather you need to pay for is the £60-£100 for them to determine what you need done. So obviously I dont want to go form dentist to dentist paying £100 a time to find the cheapest option, how do I go about finding the cheapest place in my area?
Firstly, I'd get signed up to a regular dentist. If you're even thinking about braces then you need damn good hygeine and regular cleanings etc. Then ask your GD for 2 or 3 referals and go from there.
If the GD is not an option, pick the nearest 2 or 3 to you from either the internet or yellow pages. See what their advertising says re payments; costs etc.
It's hard to give rough ideas of figures etc, I was lucky to eventually get mine done on the NHS as an adult (after much persuading my GD to refer me to my local hospital) but i did have 3 private consults that ranged from £1900 to £3500 for the same work and they all were happy to tailor repayments to meet my needs to some degree or another.
I have a similar sort of profile to you, and surgery was presented to me as an option for treatment, but in the end I decided not to go that way because I was told that there'd be no significant benefits to having it instead of an extraction. So that might be an option for you as well.
As for finding my ortho, I was referred to him by my dentist. I was really happy with my initial consultation, but I still went for another opinion with an ortho that someone I knew was going to. I ended up going back to the first one, and have been happy with my treatment so far.
As for my payments, it's broken up into an initial instalment, and then equal smaller instalments every few months over the rest of the treatment period.
Good luck finding your orthodontist - do you have friends or colleagues who could recommend one to you, perhaps?
Meryaten wrote:I had a retrognathic (set-back) chin, and associated Class II div 2 malocclusion (overjet). My orthodontist felt that, in my case, extraction was not appropriate, and so offered me either a compromise result (overjet would not have been fully corrected) or surgery. I went for a consultation with an extremely experienced OS, and asked him what would be the benefits, but he was very reluctant to give any promises.
I'm 17 months post-op now. And as well as having a really super outcome orthodontically, I've found that my jaw joints are in much better shape - where before my jaw might sometimes lock, this no longer happens at all.
Of course, the results should also be more stable than the compromise treatment would have achieved as well.
How much was the cost between the compromised option and the full one with surgery? The brace I had on the NHS didn't require me to have surgery so maybe that was the compromised option they took. My brother had the same and his teeth are almost completly straght teeth although his chin is slighltly set back but not as much as mine.
I'm in the UK - my dentist recommended an orthodontist to me. I've got upper ceramics and metal lowers. Treatment is estimated at 2yrs, followed by 1yr in retainers.
My consultation was £50. Treatment was about £2400 up front or £2600 paid in three instalments of about £800. There was a monthly arrangement available to but I cant remember what it was.
