The Treatment Process at Knapp Orthodontics
Learn all about what happens during your free consultation, starting treatment, scheduling appointments, and more.
Getting Started
Free? Yes!
In order to assess your teeth, bite, growth, wishes and desires, Dr. Knapp offers you a free consultation.
This first consultation appointment is all about YOU! We want to learn what you want to accomplish or how we can help.
We’ll take two diagnostic X-rays (a panoramic radiograph and a cephalometric radiograph). We’ll also take a few photos of your teeth and face.
Dr. Knapp will then do his examination, smile analysis, and make some clinical notes. This diagnosis stage will be very important for Dr. Knapp to provide you with appropriate ways to address your concerns.
We’ll then upload your photos so we can look at them together on the big screen TV, and Dr. Knapp will discuss all the good and bad things he noted during his examination.
After this, he will provide one or a few treatment options.
Then, we’ll review scheduling, pricing, and financing and answer any additional questions that you have. We can start treatment with a small down payment and stretch financing out through the length of treatment.
This appointment will last approximately one hour.
Getting Braces
After you have had your free consultation, our Knapp Orthodontics team will schedule an appointment to put your braces on or an appointment to scan your teeth for clear aligners.
Sometimes, there are openings for this to happen on the same day as your free consultation, but it depends on the schedule.
In order to start with braces, plan on a 60–90-minute appointment. During this appointment, we will clean your teeth and prepare them for the braces to be glued on.
We’ll then glue all of your braces on. A wire that connects all the braces will then be placed so that the teeth can begin moving! At that appointment, pick your favorite color to tie around the brackets.
A scan for clear aligners will take 10-20 minutes. Once we receive your clear aligners, it will take 45-60 minutes to deliver your first set of trays and review the instructions.
Occasionally, before we put braces on, we’ll start with an appliance – like an expander or a space maintainer. This appliance will set us up for success, and we’ll try to get braces on as quickly as we can afterward.
In the beginning, you may come to a few appointments to get started, and then the number of appointments should spread out.
Appointments
Appointments are usually scheduled every four, six, or eight weeks, depending on the adjustments made at the previous appointment.
We work hard to limit the amount of time that patients are waiting to come inside for their appointment/adjustment. Out of respect for patients on the schedule, we may not be able to squeeze extra appointments into the schedule, but we’ll find an alternative time that works for you.
We try our best to accommodate everyone’s schedule, but sometimes, we’re limited with the times that we can offer.
We also try our best to get as much done as we can in a single appointment so you do not have to make a return trip.
We usually schedule longer appointments in the morning and shorter/faster appointments in the afternoon so that more patients can be seen.
Please let us know if you will not be able to make it to an appointment so that we can adjust the schedule and get you a new appointment. Please let us know when you arrive if you have limited time so that we do not go beyond the time you have available.