Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Which Technology is Right for You?

Invisalign:
Invisalign is an exciting treatment approach that has allowed thousands of patients world wide to enhance their smiles without wearing braces. We have also treated many patients with Invisalign for the upper teeth and braces for the lower teeth when the tooth movement needs required it. All Invisalign patients require refinement in one form or another at the end of treatment. For some, this involves the production of more aligners, for others it requires partial bracketing of some teeth for a limited amount of time.

Damon Self-Ligating System:
For decades orthodontists have struggled with the difficult decision of when to remove permanent teeth to acheive facial balance and optimal smile esthetics. The advent of a self-ligating bracket that controls the wire in the slot of the bracket without the need for a rubber o-ring has resultedin has changed our traditional thinking in regards to treatment planning the removal of permanent teeth. Because of the low force levels delivered to the teeth and the delicate bone that surrounds them, we are now able to create space for crowded teeth without flaring front teeth forward but rather by a gradual widening of the posterior areas of the individual arches of teeth.

Suresmile:
Image-guided Orthodontics:"When do I get my braces off": this is the question that every orthodontist hears multiple times on a daily basis. Treatment efficiency has become a significant focus of the orthodontics profession. Suresmileis a high technology approach to orthodontics that involve 3-D scanning of the dentition, software treatment planning and robotic creation of customized orthodontic archwires. Every orthdontist is trained to carefully evaluate tooth movement and make adjustments in the position of brackets or make bends in the wire to customize tooth movement and the final outcome of the treatment. This process is often laborious and slow because the response of each patient's dentition to the adjustments executed by the clinician are variable. The suresmile process significantly reduces this variability. The precision and accuracy that can be achieved with digital and robotic application of the orthodontists skills is phenomenal. Patients treated with this approach enjoy a significant reduction in the number of visit requires to acheive their final outcome.