Reviews of Dr. Alvaro Gracia (Dentist)

Robert Morris

I have been a patient of Dr. Gracia's for 20 years and have been extremely happy with his level of care. At his practice, I have had scaling and grafting done by his affiliated periodontist and I have had practically all my oral exams and fillings done by Dr. Gracia personally. He was professional and courteous and he provided excellent care in every case. On those times he was not available during my visit, the other dentists at the office handled my case just fine in all but one instance (in which a new DMD simply recommended an unnecessary treatment). Dr. Gracia's hygienists have been excellent. For my fillings, bonding, checkups, and other care for 20 years, Dr. Alvaro Gracia has been excellent, and he continues to be my dental healthcare provider of choice.

Kaz Zymantas

I am a dentist that came from Chicago area to get my mouth rehabilitated by Dr. Gracia. We had spoken about my case and he seemed like the doctor that could take care of my problems. We discussed what it was that I wanted to accomplish which was to be conservative in the preparation of my teeth and to make my smile brighter. I sent Dr. Gracia my mounted models and photos. The models were in CR. I wanted to just lightly close the bite in CR which would have meant that he did not need to much preparation on the biting surface of the teeth. His lab was supposed to make a wax up that was in CR and would allow for minimal prep. I am going to have a web site to explain the nightmare of my teeth. The whole process was bad. 5 of the temps came off within a week of the procedure. The color of the temps was a very dark shade and there was poor communication with his lab. I talked to the Dr. and he said that we could do the case in 2 visits, one to prep the teeth and take impressions and one about a month later to deliver the final crowns. I was very upset after the first visit because the shade of the temporaries were not even close to being a light shade. I was not aware that he was grinding so much of my tooth structure. He did not take accurate bite records. His staff laughed at me when I suggested a way to take what is called cross bites to maintain the proper vertical relationship of the teeth with the temporaries. The crowns were cemented with temp cement and I was on my way. Ugly dark teeth and within a week 5 of the temps had come off. On a personal note, I could not understand why Dr. Gracia was talking to his staff and anyone within ear shot of his operator y about his physician friend (who he named, I will not name him here) who spent time at his vacation home smoking marijuana. That to me was very unethical. I proposed to the dr that we make another set of temporary teeth called PMMA. He agreed. This meant that there was to now be a third appointment. The day of the PMMA delivery I took a look at the models of my teeth and I was temporarily set back. They looked very rough with sharp line angles. The doctor took of my old temporary teeth and tried to place the PMMA's . They did not fit very well and he had to do massive amounts of adjustments to them as well as to some of my teeth to make them fit. He started to adjust the bite(How the teeth come together) and used a very thick paper. I would have imagined that he would use the thinnest articulating paper to fine tune the bite. He spent a lot of time adjusting my bite on the temporary teeth. At some point he said that I had a balanced occlusion. When I bit down, all I could feel was an upper rt and lower rt tooth touching. None of the teeth fit together. He kept trying to tell me that everything was fine. I kept saying that there was minimal contact and he was almost like trying to talk me into having a better bite. I was wondering if he was doing some sort of Scientology technique on me trying to somehow to get me accept a less than acceptable result. It was at this moment that I lost all confidence in the doctor. We went upstairs then to his office and I told him that I was not even close to being pleased with the work he did. He yelled at me and said that he did not need my money and he was so busy he was wasting his time with me. Fortunately he did not send the case to have the final crowns because that would have been a total disaster with lots of expense on his or my part. He then went on the say that my case could not be taken care of unless I redid all of my teeth, not just my upper teeth. His staff became very rude and even sent me emails saying that I had gone walking around the office and bad mouthed the doctor while I was there. They were very hostile to me and my wife. I will have a link on this site to a webpage I am working on that will have photos and go into more detail about my bad times at Dr. Gracia's office.