Dr. Nammy Patel from Green Dentistry in San Francisco explains what to expect from a smile design consultation. She covers how she talks to patients about their concerns and helps them find the right solution to improve their smile.
Dr. Nammy: When you come into our practice for our smile design consultation, the first thing that will happen is you and I will sit down eye-to-eye, knee-to-knee, and figure out, what is it that makes you unhappy with your smile? What is the result you’re looking for and why?
Is it that you want to make sure the teeth are just whiter? Is it that you want your teeth to be straighter? Or is it that you just don’t like your teeth at all? What is it? Is it the shape of your lips? Is it the way your facial profile looks? Whatever that concern is, we’ll sit down and go through that first.
Once we do that, we’ll look inside your mouth. We do some digital imaging, we look at your teeth, we look at the gums, we make sure everything’s healthy or what we need to do to get healthy. Then we look at, what are the options? What are the options we can do in order to make you have the best and beautiful smile you want? At the same time, we’re going to give you the best results, saving time, effort, energy, money, and teeth.
Sometimes patients come in and they’re wanting straighter teeth, and instead of 16 veneers, the solution may be straightening the teeth. We’ll sit down, go through the advantages and disadvantages of the results, what will happen, what the time will be, and also the costs that are involved, so you can make an educated decision to see what will work for you. That’s what we want to do in our practice… we want to make sure you are in the driver’s seat, you decide what’s comfortable for you. My job is to give you an honest answer to your solution, and also try to save time, effort, energy, money, and teeth.
