Treatment

Braces

Brackets and a wire, moving teeth a fraction of a millimetre at a time. It is the slowest treatment the clinic offers and the only one that straightens teeth without taking anything off them.

Fitting: One appointment
Treatment: 18 months–3 years
Adjustments: Every 4–8 weeks
Tooth removed: None

What it is

Braces work by pressure. A bracket on each tooth, a wire through them, and a force small enough that the bone dissolves ahead of the tooth and rebuilds behind it. That biology is why the treatment takes eighteen months to three years and why it cannot be rushed: push harder and you lose the root, not just the time.

It is worth saying what this fixes beyond appearance. Crowded teeth trap what a brush cannot reach; a bite that meets wrongly wears the enamel off particular teeth and loads the jaw joint unevenly. Straightening is cosmetic and it is also the treatment that stops those.

And it is worth saying what it costs a traveller: this is the one treatment here that needs you in the chair every few weeks. If you live elsewhere, aligners — reviewed remotely, changed at home — are usually the only version of orthodontics that fits your life. Say where you live before anyone quotes you for brackets.

Moving a tooth costs you nothing of the tooth. Grinding it into line costs you the tooth. That is the whole case for taking the slow road first.
Prof. Dr. Coşkun Yıldız

Which one you need

Metal braces
Stainless brackets and a wire. The most predictable and the most capable — there is no movement they cannot make — and the most visible.
Any case, including the difficult ones
Ceramic braces
Tooth-coloured brackets. They work like metal ones and read from a distance as nothing much; they are more fragile and want more care.
The same treatment, quieter
Lingual braces
Fitted behind the teeth, so nobody sees them at all. Harder to clean, harder to speak around for the first weeks, and usually the longest of the three.
Invisible from the front
Clear aligners
Removable trays changed on a schedule, made in a series from one scan. Not for every case, and the only orthodontics that does not need you back in the chair every month.
Mild to moderate crowding — and anyone who lives abroad

What happens to you

Two visits, and a wait at home in between

Before anything
Records and a plan
X-rays, photographs and a scan, and an honest conversation about where you live. Fixed braces need you here regularly; if you cannot be, that changes the answer rather than the price.
Day 1
Fitting
The brackets are bonded and the first wire is fitted in one appointment. Nothing is drilled and no anaesthetic is needed. The teeth ache for a few days and then settle.
Every 4–8 weeks
Adjustments
The wire is changed or tightened, which is where the movement actually comes from. This is the part that decides whether fixed braces suit a patient who lives abroad.
18 months–3 years
The treatment itself
How long depends on how far the teeth have to travel and on your age — bone remodels more slowly the older you are.
Afterwards
Retention, for good
Teeth drift back towards where they came from. A bonded wire behind the teeth or a night retainer is not the end of the treatment, it is the rest of it.

Before anything
Records and a plan
X-rays, photographs and a scan, and an honest conversation about where you live. Fixed braces need you here regularly; if you cannot be, that changes the answer rather than the price.
Day 1
Fitting
The brackets are bonded and the first wire is fitted in one appointment. Nothing is drilled and no anaesthetic is needed. The teeth ache for a few days and then settle.
Every 4–8 weeks
Adjustments
The wire is changed or tightened, which is where the movement actually comes from. This is the part that decides whether fixed braces suit a patient who lives abroad.
18 months–3 years
The treatment itself
How long depends on how far the teeth have to travel and on your age — bone remodels more slowly the older you are.
Afterwards
Retention, for good
Teeth drift back towards where they came from. A bonded wire behind the teeth or a night retainer is not the end of the treatment, it is the rest of it.

Before anything
Records and a plan
X-rays, photographs and a scan, and an honest conversation about where you live. Fixed braces need you here regularly; if you cannot be, that changes the answer rather than the price.
Day 1
Fitting
The brackets are bonded and the first wire is fitted in one appointment. Nothing is drilled and no anaesthetic is needed. The teeth ache for a few days and then settle.
Every 4–8 weeks
Adjustments
The wire is changed or tightened, which is where the movement actually comes from. This is the part that decides whether fixed braces suit a patient who lives abroad.
18 months–3 years
The treatment itself
How long depends on how far the teeth have to travel and on your age — bone remodels more slowly the older you are.
Afterwards
Retention, for good
Teeth drift back towards where they came from. A bonded wire behind the teeth or a night retainer is not the end of the treatment, it is the rest of it.

Before anything
Records and a plan
X-rays, photographs and a scan, and an honest conversation about where you live. Fixed braces need you here regularly; if you cannot be, that changes the answer rather than the price.
Day 1
Fitting
The brackets are bonded and the first wire is fitted in one appointment. Nothing is drilled and no anaesthetic is needed. The teeth ache for a few days and then settle.
Every 4–8 weeks
Adjustments
The wire is changed or tightened, which is where the movement actually comes from. This is the part that decides whether fixed braces suit a patient who lives abroad.
18 months–3 years
The treatment itself
How long depends on how far the teeth have to travel and on your age — bone remodels more slowly the older you are.
Afterwards
Retention, for good
Teeth drift back towards where they came from. A bonded wire behind the teeth or a night retainer is not the end of the treatment, it is the rest of it.

Questions

Can this really be done in a day?

The fitting can. The treatment cannot: eighteen months to three years is the honest range, and any page that suggests otherwise is describing the appointment, not the result.

Does it hurt?

Fitting does not. The three or four days after fitting and after each adjustment ache, particularly when biting, and orthodontic wax handles a bracket that is rubbing.

What can I not eat?

Anything hard enough to break a bracket or sticky enough to pull one off — nuts, hard crusts, toffee, ice. It is a genuine change to how you eat for the length of the treatment.

Braces or aligners?

Braces for complex movements, rotations and severe crowding, and for anyone who will not wear a removable appliance twenty-two hours a day. Aligners for mild to moderate cases, for adults who do not want brackets, and for patients who live too far away for monthly visits.

Am I too old?

No. Bone remodels at any age; it simply takes longer, and the gums have to be healthy first. Adults are a large share of orthodontic patients.

Patients

The people who already came

Six of our patients, filmed at the clinic and talking about their own treatment. They are the clinic’s patients rather than any one procedure’s — what each of them had is in the film.