Gerald M Sweder, DDS

Love him. My daughter’s teeth were pretty bad when we saw him initially. He identified a tooth that needed an emergency root canal and the tooth was saved. She did the palette expander and then braces, and after 18 months, her braces came off and her smile is gorgeous!

I just finished my treatment yesterday with Dr Sweder and would highly recommend him after the experience I’ve had over the past 4 months.
I had braces taken off in Australia over 10 years now. At that time I had a lingual bar put on the top and bottom set of my teeth to keep them in place once the braces had come off.
I initially went in telling him that the lingual bar on the back of my teeth needed to be replaced because one tooth had become dislodged from the glue. But after he closely examined it, he said he could just repair the glue down there and it would fix the problem. He looked at my top lingual bar (which had been replaced by another Orthodontist in NY 1.5 years ago) and could see the material had started to deteriorate in my mouth and recommended he take it off and replace it.
When he took it off, he found my teeth had some small gaps in between them, so recommended (if I wanted to close the gaps — and I did) I wear a retainer for a month or so. We had that made, I wore it for 6 weeks and the gaps closed up. Yesterday I went in and he put the new lingual bar on the back of my top teeth.
I am very happy with the final outcome and will recommend Dr Sweder to my friends. I should also mention that his receptionist, Michelle is a lovely warm person who makes you feel welcome when you come into the office everytime. Dr Sweder worked with me to create a solution to fix my teeth when I didn’t have orthodontic insurance and I amvery appreciative of this.

The good parts: Compared to the NYC average, everyone in the office was extremely kind, and compared to lots of similar orthodontists or dentist offices, the intake paperwork was quite simple.
The bad parts: When it came to actual care for my teeth my experience was that Dr. Sweder is not as competent as I would have expected. I came in with a permanent retainer that has quite clearly become unbonded from one of my teeth. I can both feel it with my tongue, and can also see a gap form between my tooth and the bonding strip if I look in the mirror while gently wiggling my tooth. However, Dr. Sweder examined it and could not believe it was unbonded, and didn’t want to do anything. I gently prompted him too look more closely, but he still couldn’t detect anything. I have had this unbonding happen several times before (I’ve had the retainer in for over a decade) and every time it has been a simple process to remove the old bonding and reapply a new bond to secure the tooth to the retainer. Dr Sweder was unable to see the problem or perhaps just unwilling to deal with it, so I will take my business elsewhere. I wasted time on this appointment, and still had to pay him an $ 85 consulting fee just to poke at my tooth for a few minutes.

I’m a teenager and I go to my appointments about my braces usually without my parents. He’s very nice and straightforward when he talks about what I should be doing to make sure my teeth align properly. Oh boy but when it actually comes to putting on new braces or scraping my teeth, it’s terrible. When the new braces are applied, they use this UV device to make sure the adhesive hardens properly. No issue with the concept, but it’s just that the device tends to dig into my gums. And it hurts. My gums have been very minorly scraped by it before, and I do not look forward to that tool. I went to my appointment this morning so he could check the movement of my teeth and he spent a while scraping my bottom incisors because it’s hard to reach there with toothbrushes. Awful, awful, awful. Scrape scrape scrape scrape. Blood everywhere. Make it stop. I needed at least 3 – 4 rinses before all the blood came out. Most certainly not looking forward to that either.
But hey it has to be done in some way, right? And my two older brothers have gone to Dr. Sweder for their braces and we haven’t had major problems. I personally like him and his secretaries. They’re friendly and professional. Honestly I’m not so sure I would recommend him to others, though. I don’t want them to have the kind of bad experiences I went through.

I started my orthodontia treatment with Dr. Sweder and I liked him very much in the beginning. They quoted me $ 6280 for 1.5 years of orthodontia treatment. Then I moved to California, When I had to wrap up my account and get everything switched over, the person in charge of financials tried to get me to pay almost half of the total amount for the entire treatment between cash and my insurance, after only going through 5 months of treatment!
Long story short, I ended up moving back to NYC 9 months later and went in to see Dr. Sweder, His financial person saw that there was only $ 1745 left on my treatment after leaving California and seeing their records but she said that they needed to do more X-​Rays and new molds (even though they had their original molds and I have braces on my top and bottom teeth), which is why it would cost an additional $ 455. I told her that I was going to get a second opinion. Sure enough, I found a very well reviewed orthodontist in Brooklyn that said that he would finish my treatment for $ 1800 and mentioned nothing of new molds and said that the X-​rays were included in that fee. It was the only other opinion that I received but the only one that I needed.
All in all, while I liked Dr. Sweder, the business practices of his office are ridiculous and now I just feel as though his finance person is just swindling people out of their money. I also found out that I should have gotten a second opinion from the very beginning because the prices here were $ 1000 more than other places that I checked later on.
In response to another review on here, they also told me that my insurance wouldn’t cover the consultation. When I called them and checked, I came to find out that they most certainly did cover it. They just didn’t want to go through the trouble of processing more insurance paperwork.

BTW, I called my dental insurance — I AM covered to see Dr Sweder. Thanks to the rude/​lazy receptionist, she is losing potential patients.

I went to Dr. Sweder for Invisalign as an adult and am very happy with my results. He is always on time, explains things very honestly and thoroughly, and is very personable. I would recommend him highly for anyone else.

I love my Dr. Sweder. I’m currently under Dr. Sweder’s care for adult braces and he has been so wonderful. He is very gentle, caring and patient. I’m so glad I found him. If you need braces, whether adult or child, I would highly recommend Dr. Sweder. His office staff is just as nice.

Patient, gentle orthodontist for kids and adults.