How is the appointment booked, and what happens next?

People who call almost always say the same sentence: an appointment for implants. What the call allows you to fix is more modest and more useful — a date for the diagnostic consultation. The implant, if there is one, comes afterwards, and only if the examination indicates it. Every decision about the treatment depends on a prior individual assessment and diagnosis.

The only channel for fixing that date is the number +351 220 430 090. The Instituto AreLuna states that its team speaks several languages, French among them: the call can be held in French from beginning to end.

The stated opening hours are Monday to Friday, from 09:30 to 19:00, Porto time, which is one hour behind Paris. The establishment is closed at weekends. In practice, from France, nobody answers before 10:30 Paris time, and a call made at 19:30 on leaving work still falls within the hours, since it is 18:30 in Porto.

Anyone who asks for ‘next week, in the afternoon’ gets the answer during the call and nowhere else. The free slots and the wait between the call and the consultation are not published on this site; they are the two things to ask before hanging up.

The consultation lasts 30 to 60 minutes, depending on the complexity of the case. It is charged for, and its amount is then deducted from the treatment if it goes ahead. That amount is not published and this page writes none: it is asked for during the call. The real length, like what follows, depends on a prior individual assessment and diagnosis.

What to bring comes down to one instruction: everything that exists on the person’s medical, clinical or dental condition — reports, current treatments, old documents from the regular dentist. X-rays, on the other hand, are taken at the clinic.

The consultation begins with a clinical examination and a 3D X-ray — the CBCT, which shows the bone in three dimensions and not as a shadow. It is on this image that the case is planned on a computer before any surgery, which the Instituto AreLuna calls guided surgery.

Two separate documents come out of it. The plan says what needs doing, in what order, and how many journeys that implies. The quote says how much, line by line; the Instituto AreLuna hands it over detailed and written in French. Neither can be written beforehand: they exist only after a prior individual examination and diagnosis.

When surgery is indicated, it generally takes place the day after the consultation. Hence the minimum of three days on site that the Instituto AreLuna states: one day for the assessment, one for the surgery, and at least one for recovery before getting on a plane. This timetable depends on a prior individual assessment and diagnosis, and the examination may alter it.

For someone working in France, the clinic being closed at weekends changes the calculation of leave. The consultation and the surgery necessarily fall between Monday and Friday; only the recovery day can fall at a weekend. That makes at least two working days to take off, as annual leave or RTT days, plus the outward journey. The exact number is settled after a prior individual examination and diagnosis, since it is the plan that says whether the surgery follows the consultation.

This is where the French case stands apart. Elsewhere, a dental quote sometimes goes through an insurance fund before the treatment, for approval or for a calculation of cover. For the implant, in France, there is nothing of the kind to wait for: the Assurance Maladie does not cover it, whether it is placed in France or abroad, and so there is no authorisation to seek before starting.

In practice, no third party rereads the quote in the patient’s place, no administrative step comes between the consultation and the decision, no form conditions what follows. Directive 2011/24/EU on cross-border healthcare frames a reimbursement claim at French tariffs; it does not create cover where the nomenclature provides none.

The only step that makes sense before deciding concerns the crown or the prosthesis, which a mutuelle, the complementary private cover most people in France hold, may cover in part depending on the contract. The detailed quote in French is used to put the question to it. It is information, not permission: the answer changes the calculation, not the right to decide.

The quote remains valid for 15 days after it has been presented: this is administrative information, which leaves time to put the question to the mutuelle and to redo the calculation calmly. The amount in it exists only after a prior individual examination and diagnosis.

If the person accepts, the treatment follows the written plan, at the establishment at Rua de Júlio Dinis, 194, 4050-327 Porto, where the dental care of the Instituto AreLuna is provided. The surgery dates and the number of journeys are then fixed, and depend on a prior individual assessment and diagnosis.

If the person does not accept, the matter ends there. There is nothing to cancel with any body, since nothing has been started: it is the rather convenient flip side of an implant that the statutory scheme does not reimburse.