If you are considering braces, Dr. Wall is the best! I highly recommend him and you will not regret going to him.
My review is long winded because I have known Dr. Wall for over 20 years now.
Dr. Wall did my braces decades ago when I was 15 years old. I remember him being really nice and putting up with my teenage disposition...you know kinda sassy and way too frank. He just tolerated me and was just very nice and professional. My teeth were pretty horribly crooked, but did not require any pulling or anything. My braces came off after just 12 months, and my teeth were PERFECT. Unfortunately, I did not wear my retainer because it made me talk with a major lisp. In retrospect, I should have returned back to him and he would have fixed it or given me a new one, I'm sure.
Fast forward about 15 years and my teeth were just as crooked as before I had braces, so I got them again. But I went to a Kailua orthodontist who will remain unnamed, and 2 years and $4K later, he was finished with me and when he said my braces were coming off, I said, but there's a huge triangular gap between my top two front teeth! He said "no one's teeth are perfect." Hello!!! Isn't that the point of braces? I was so mad. But that was that and even faithfully wearing my retainer every night, my teeth shifted and my open bite even came back.
So I returned to Dr. Wall. I wanted braces again. He did not recommend braces a 3rd time (I know there are risks involved with shifting teeth). I was surprised...most doctors will do anything for the money! The fact that he didn't want to really speaks volumes about Dr. Wall's integrity and caring attitude for his patients. I'm sure if I had insisted, he would have done the braces, but I was kind of hesitant about a 3rd time with braces as well because I love my teeth and don't want them falling out! Instead he made me a retainer that would close the open bite almost all the way, and even went in and sanded down my teeth (one was chipped). Several months later, I returned because the top gap wasn't closed enough and food kept getting stuck, so he adjusted the retainer, and food no longer gets stuck.
Then I returned just last week because I felt the retainer was touching my gums, even though visibly, it wasn't. Anyway, he humored me and cut the retainer back a bit and now my gums are doing much better and healing up. Every visit was pleasant and efficient, and he even took the time to draw diagrams and such to educate me.
Now about my son...he goes to a dentist who also has an in-house orthodontist (who will also remain unnamed). He had a baby tooth that wouldn't fall out even though the adult tooth was almost all the way grown in, so the dentist recommended a consult with the ortho, and we took it. This orthodontist did the hard sell...OMg he said, your son is going to have a severe under bite because the lower jaw is the last part of the face to stop growing (even though no one in his family has an under bite), and he needs to get braces ASAP as well as wear some stupid head gear thing everyday after school and at night, and look at this and look at that. I listened to him doing the same kind of hard sell to the people in the next examination room. So I took the x-ray to Dr. Wall and he was not at all concerned at this point. He said in fact, there is room here and there for the teeth because etc. etc. He educated us both about how much room there actually was for adult teeth to come in, how the jaw bone grows, how the top teeth were going to get pushed forward even more by incoming teeth, etc. He reassured my son that his teeth were fine, nothing to worry about at this point, but let's just watch it and come back in a year or two if teeth start crowding or an under bite starts forming, etc. Dr. Wall could have recommended braces, and I would have done it because I trust his judgement and have seen many pictures of his work (he does PERFECT work, unlike my other orthodontist), but he didn't. He wasn't obsessed with taking my money or scaring me into braces for my son. read more