I am on my way

One of our orthodontic patients had an adjustment appointment and she arrived 15 minutes late. That was despite a reminder call which she personally answered one and a half hours before the appointment. She said that she was on her way.

As she was already late, there was no time for us to carry out the planned treatment. On top of that, she broke two braces which caused a gap to open between her lower front teeth. The consequences of being late in this instance in addition to not doing the planned treatment:

• no time to repair the broken braces to enable treatment to progress
• inability to correct the gap due to the absence of braces in that area

The patient had to be given another appointment just to address the above problems and as circumstances would have it, the next available appointment was 4 weeks away.

Thus treatment would have been delayed by at least two months if not more. It would be rather unrealistic for this patient to expect her treatment to be completed within the estimated time.