Dr Joshua Ch'ng, Specialist Orthodontist

Role: Specialist orthodontist

Qualifications: BDSc, University of Melbourne (2013); FRACDS (Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons, 2017); DClinDent (Orthodontics), University of Melbourne

Registration: Registered dentist with specialist registration in orthodontics, DEN0001857728

Specialist registration can be verified on the AHPRA register of practitioners at ahpra.gov.au. Orthodontics is one of the thirteen dental specialties recognised by the Dental Board of Australia, and the title “orthodontist” is protected. The specialty page is Specialist Orthodontists; the other specialists here are listed on Dentists and Registered Specialists and under Specialist Care.

What specialist registration requires, in the Board's own words

The Dental Board of Australia states that “there are 13 dental specialties in Australia which are approved by the Australian Health Workforce Ministerial Council”. Orthodontics is one of them. The list is closed — a description that is not on it is not a specialty, whatever it appears alongside in an advertisement.

Beyond the specialty qualification, the Board's specialist registration standard requires an applicant to have “completed a minimum of two years general dental practice” — which “may be achieved by experience outside Australia, subject to assessment and approval by the Board” — and to have “met all other requirements for general registration as a dentist”. The Board adds that “all dentists who wish to apply for specialist registration must have general registration and be on the Register of practitioners under the division of dentists”.

The check is free and takes a minute. Ahpra “publishes an online register of all dental practitioners that provides the profession and the public with up-to-date information about a dental practitioner's registration status”, and that register “also includes details of the specialty or specialties for dentists who hold specialist registration”. Search the name at ahpra.gov.au and read the profession and specialty fields. (Source: Dental Board of Australia — dentalboard.gov.au.)

Background

Dr Joshua Ch'ng graduated with a Bachelor of Dental Science from the University of Melbourne in 2013. He gained fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons in general dentistry in 2017, and was awarded the Kenneth Sutherland prize for the highest marks in general dentistry.

He returned to the University of Melbourne in 2018 for specialist training in orthodontics. During that training he worked in Michigan on a collaborative research project with the Dental and Craniofacial Bionetwork for Image Analysis on three-dimensional image analysis, and has since presented that research at conferences of the Australian Society of Orthodontists and the European Orthodontic Society.

His clinical interests are digital orthodontics and clear aligner treatment — see Our Technology and Invisalign. He speaks English and Mandarin.

He has written the practice's article on who should be providing aligner treatment: Specialist Orthodontist vs General Dentist: Which Is Best for Invisalign?

What an orthodontist is

An orthodontist is a dental specialist in the alignment of teeth and the relationship between the upper and lower jaws. See Orthodontics, and for the underlying problem, What is malocclusion of the teeth? and Treatment of malocclusion. The pathway is:

A dental degree.
General practice experience — the Board's standard requires a minimum of two years.
Three years of full-time postgraduate specialist training, which is competitive to enter.
Application to the Dental Board of Australia for specialist registration.

The Australian Society of Orthodontists' consumer site describes the field as “the diagnosis, prevention, and correction of crooked teeth, jaws, and unfavourable bite patterns”, and makes a point that is easy to miss: “orthodontic treatment is not just about straight teeth. It can correct a bad biting pattern, help with sleep apnoea, and prevent uneven wear of the teeth.” It also notes plainly that “many general dentists also perform orthodontic treatment” (teeth.org.au, Teeth Straightening and Braces).

Any registered dentist may legally provide orthodontic treatment. The difference is training, case selection and what happens when a case does not go to plan. See Orthodontic treatment: general dentist vs specialist orthodontist? and Why would I need to see a dental specialist? An orthodontist sees the full range — including growing children, skeletal discrepancies, impacted teeth and surgical cases — and works with oral and maxillofacial surgeons where jaw surgery is required.

What the scope does not include

An orthodontist does not place implants, do fillings or crowns, perform root canal treatment or treat gum disease. Orthodontic treatment is normally provided alongside a general dentist who continues routine care throughout, and routine check-ups and cleaning must continue during orthodontic treatment — appliances make teeth harder to clean, and decay around brackets is a real and permanent consequence. See Dental Cleans and Hygienists and How often should I go to the dentist?

Braces or aligners: an honest comparison

Fixed braces — brackets bonded to the teeth connected by a wire.

Handle the widest range of movements, including large rotations, vertical movements and complex cases.
Do not depend on patient compliance for the appliance to be working.
Visible (though ceramic and lingual options reduce this), and require careful cleaning and some dietary restriction. See All your conventional braces questions answered and What are the most common complaints associated with conventional braces?

Clear aligners — a sequence of removable trays.

Less visible, removable for eating and cleaning. See What are the hygiene benefits of Invisalign?
Effective for crowding, spacing and mild-to-moderate alignment problems. See Exploring Invisalign and How to get straight teeth without braces? Or Invisalign
Depend entirely on wear time, typically 20–22 hours a day. Insufficient wear is the commonest cause of a case that does not track. See How to protect your aligners and your smile
Usually require bonded attachments, and often some interproximal reduction.
The digital treatment plan is a prediction, not a promise. Refinement aligners partway through are normal, not a sign of failure.

Neither is universally better. The right choice depends on the movements required, the patient's age, and how reliably the appliance will be worn. See Benefits of conventional braces vs lingual braces vs Invisalign, How do I know which orthodontic treatment is best for me? and Why should I choose a Blue Diamond Invisalign provider?

Keeping teeth clean during treatment — the part that causes permanent damage if it is skipped

The ASO's consumer guidance is specific. For fixed appliances, “it is very important to brush and clean between your teeth well while you are having orthodontic treatment”, and “for people wearing braces, brushing after every meal is recommended as food can get stuck around the brackets”; both manual and electric toothbrushes are suitable. Because “cleaning between your teeth with string floss can be tricky while wearing braces”, the guidance points to “floss threaders for braces or interdental brushes”, noting that interdental brushes “can help to clean between the teeth as well as between the orthodontic brackets”.

For aligners, the same source gives the instruction that most affects the teeth underneath: the trays “should be worn at all times other than when eating and drinking liquids other than water”, because “drinking liquids such as fruit juice or soft drink while wearing clear aligners can trap the liquids against the teeth, which can cause damage to the teeth if it happens frequently”. The trays themselves “can be cleaned with an antibacterial liquid soap and a spare toothbrush”, rinsed afterwards with warm water. (Source: teeth.org.au.) See What causes white spots on teeth? and Is flossing really that important?

Things that are true about orthodontics and rarely advertised

Appliances move teeth. They do not move jaws in adults. A skeletal discrepancy — a genuinely small or large lower jaw — can be influenced by growth modification in a growing child, but in a finished adult it is corrected by orthognathic surgery or camouflaged by moving teeth within the existing jaws. Any claim that an appliance will reshape an adult's face or jaw should be treated with scepticism. See What is orthognathic surgery? and What can I eat and drink following jaw surgery?
Retention is lifelong. Teeth drift throughout life, and relapse after orthodontic treatment is not a failure of the treatment but the natural behaviour of teeth. Retainers — fixed, removable, or both — must be worn indefinitely. Anyone not told this before starting has not been properly informed. See Will my teeth need retainers after I've had braces? and Why do teeth shift?
Root resorption — shortening of the tooth roots — occurs to some degree in most orthodontic cases. It is usually clinically insignificant; occasionally it is not.
Decalcification (permanent white scarring on the enamel) around brackets is caused by poor cleaning, not by the braces, and it does not go away when the braces come off. See What causes white spots on teeth?
Treatment takes as long as it takes. Typical comprehensive treatment runs 18 to 30 months. Techniques promising dramatic acceleration have limited supporting evidence. See How long does it take to have orthodontic treatment?
Direct-to-consumer aligners sold without an in-person examination and without radiographs cannot detect gum disease, decay or root problems before moving teeth. The position of the national professional body is explicit: “the Australian Dental Association (ADA) do not recommend Australians have DIY orthodontic treatment”, because “they can lead to permanent damage to your teeth, gums, and jaw joints”, and the ADA “recommends that you have in-person treatment with a dentist or orthodontist which includes a thorough assessment before starting treatment and ongoing supervision” (teeth.org.au). See What Is Gum Disease? and How safe are dental x-rays

Early treatment in children

The Australian Society of Orthodontists “recommend children have an orthodontic assessment between the ages of 7 – 10”, and note that “all the adult teeth do not have to be present in the mouth for an assessment to be done” because “an examination at this age can allow for early intervention treatment should it be needed” (teeth.org.au). That is an assessment, not a commitment to treatment. Early (“interceptive”) treatment is genuinely useful for a limited set of problems — crossbites, severe crowding affecting eruption, impacted teeth, and habits causing skeletal change. For most children, a single course of treatment in the early teens is appropriate and two-phase treatment is unnecessary.

See Children's Braces and Invisalign, When should I take my child to see an orthodontist?, How long does my child need to wear braces? and Children's Dentistry.

What it costs, and the consultation

Published starting points are in the Price Guide, with detail in What is the cost of braces? and Invisalign Cost in Melbourne: A Complete Breakdown by Treatment Type. What a written plan should contain is set out in Understanding Your Treatment.

The practice offers a complimentary orthodontic consultation. Confirm the current terms when you book — what the appointment includes, whether records such as scans or radiographs are part of it or charged separately, and whether any deposit applies.

Registration

The Dental Board of Australia registers dentists, dental specialists, dental hygienists, dental therapists, oral health therapists and dental prosthetists. Specialist registration appears explicitly on the public register alongside the specialty held, and is renewed annually subject to standards for recency of practice, continuing professional development, professional indemnity insurance, criminal history and English language skills.

Those standards each carry a published date of effect: Scope of practice, 1 July 2020 — which “requires dental practitioners to practise within the scope of their education, training, and competence at all times”; Continuing professional development, 1 December 2015; Recency of practice, 1 December 2015; Professional indemnity insurance arrangements, 1 July 2016; English language skills, 18 March 2025; Criminal history, 15 July 2026; and the Specialist registration standard, 1 July 2010, with the current list of recognised specialties, related specialist titles and definitions in effect from 1 October 2017. (Source: Dental Board of Australia, Registration standards.)

Common questions

Treatment runs for a couple of years. What happens if the orthodontist becomes unavailable, or I move?

This is the question orthodontics raises more sharply than any other kind of dental treatment, because a case in progress cannot simply be paused. It is worth asking before the brackets go on, not after.

What to settle at the start:

Who covers, and how. Ask what happens if the treating practitioner is away, unwell, or leaves — who continues the case, and whether anyone else in the practice can adjust it.
What is in the record. For fixed appliances that means the bracket system and prescription used; for aligners, which system, the case number, and how many aligners and refinements the plan covers. A practitioner taking over a case needs to know what is already in your mouth. Ask for it in writing at the end, and keep it.
What the fee covers if the case does not finish where it started. Orthodontic fees are usually charged for a course of treatment rather than per visit, so a transfer part-way through has to be unpicked — what has been paid, what has been delivered, and what a new practitioner will charge to finish. There is no standard formula for this in Australia, which is exactly why it should be written down at the beginning rather than negotiated in the middle.

If you are the one moving, ask for your records, radiographs, photographs, digital scans and the treatment plan to be sent to the new practitioner. Expect a transferring case to cost more in total than an uninterrupted one, and expect the new practitioner to reassess rather than simply continue — they are taking on responsibility for the result.

And the part people forget: retention is the phase most likely to be interrupted by a move, because it lasts indefinitely. Know what your retainer is, who made it, and how to have it replaced if it is lost or breaks. See Will my teeth need retainers after I've had braces? and Understanding Your Treatment.

I have two very different quotes. How do I compare them?

Not by the headline number, because two orthodontic quotes are rarely for the same thing.

What to make each quote state, in writing:

The total fee for the whole course, and what happens if treatment runs longer than planned.
Whether records are included — radiographs, photographs, scans — or billed separately.
How many refinement or additional aligners are included, and what further ones cost.
Whether retainers are included, how many, and what a replacement costs. This is the commonest gap between two quotes that otherwise look identical.
What repairs and emergency visits cost — a debonded bracket on a Friday is a real event, not a hypothetical one.
Who provides the treatment, and their registration category. Any registered dentist may legally provide orthodontic treatment; that is a difference between quotes even when the fee is the same.

On what the numbers look like nationally, the Australian Dental Association's Dental Fees Survey 2022 found “considerable variation in the fees charged within and between states”, with general-practitioner fees up 3.7% over two years across 122 items — and the largest increase of any service category in orthodontics, at 6.9%. For practitioners charging by the hour, it recorded a specialist mean of “$921 in 2022”, a median of “$800”, and a range “between $450 and $1,500 per hour”, adding that only “a fifth (20%) of specialists charged an hourly rate” and that “survey results for specialists should be interpreted with considerable caution”, being based on 284 self-identified respondents. (Source: ADA.)

What does not exist is a benchmark you can hold a quote against. A consumer submission to the Australian Senate's inquiry into private health insurance and out-of-pocket costs noted that “there are no consumer guidelines to ascertain the reasonableness of dental fees charged” (Submission 265, McGrath, 2017 — a consumer submission, not a finding of the inquiry). So the comparison you can actually make is of inclusions, not of prices. See the Price Guide.

Do I need a referral, and what should I bring?

No. Orthodontic consultation can be arranged directly — dental care in Australia is not inside the Medicare referral system that governs medical specialist appointments.

A referral from your own dentist is still useful where there is one, because it carries the history, the images and the specific concern. Ask that any existing radiographs be sent with it rather than repeated. The principle in the radiology literature is that “strict and individualized justification should determine the prescription of each radiograph”, and that a justified radiograph “should make a substantial contribution to distinguishing between treatment options”.

Orthodontics is a field where new records usually are justified, because the specific views needed — a panoramic radiograph and a lateral cephalogram — answer questions a routine set of bitewings cannot, and because the position of unerupted teeth changes as a child grows. For scale, the International Atomic Energy Agency gives 4–30 μSv as the typical effective dose for a panoramic examination, and notes that intraoral and cephalometric doses are “usually less than one day of natural background radiation”. (Source: IAEA.) You are still entitled to ask what each image will change. See How safe are dental x-rays.

Also bring: your medical history and medicines written down, the age and eruption stage of the child if the appointment is for one, and any previous orthodontic history including retainers you still have.

What will the AHPRA register not tell me?

It will tell you the thing it is for — whether a practitioner is registered, in what category, whether a specialty is recorded, and whether there are conditions, undertakings or reprimands on the registration. For orthodontics specifically, that specialty field settles the title question outright.

What it will not tell you: how many cases a practitioner has treated, how many were aligner or fixed-appliance cases, their rate of refinement or relapse, how long treatment typically takes in their hands, what they charge, or any patient-experience measure. No Australian body publishes outcome data for individual dental practitioners, so there is no source for the comparison people most want, and any website presenting itself as one is selling listings rather than measuring anything.

What you can do instead is ask directly: how often does this practitioner treat cases like yours, what proportion of cases like yours are finished with the appliance first proposed, and at what point would the plan change. Those are answerable at a consultation, and the answers are more informative than the register was ever meant to be.

Practical details

Dr Ch'ng's specialist registration can be verified on the AHPRA public register. Orthodontic consultation can be arranged by referral or directly. See Contact Us. The full clinical team is on Our Team.

Smile Solutions, Level 1, 220 Collins Street, Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne VIC 3000. Phone 13 13 96, or theteam@smilesolutions.com.au. Monday–Friday 8.00am–6.00pm, Saturday 8.30am–1.30pm, Sunday by appointment. Location and directions.

This page records qualifications and career history as published by the practice. General information only — it is not a diagnosis, a treatment plan or a promise of any particular clinical outcome. Practitioner availability changes; confirm when booking.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.