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Dr. Gregory S. Coakley
Dr. Coakley,
I thought that I’d be able to do Invisalign but it turns out that I’m not a candidate. I still want to straighten my teeth but I am not looking forward to having braces on my teeth for a year or longer. Isn’t there a way that we could just tighten the wires really tight and finish my treatment in 2 months?
This is a common sentiment that orthodontists run into a lot. It may seem like it’s feasible to just pull really hard and have everything move into place a lot sooner, but things unfortunately don’t work that way.
The main danger that all orthodontic treatment could run into is a process called root resorption. When your adult teeth are beginning to arrive and the baby teeth are in the way, the natural process of deciduous root resorption occurs. The adult teeth exert pressure on the roots of the baby teeth which causes surrounding macrophages–neutral bodies present in the surrounding tissue–to differentiate into osteoclasts–specialized bodies which work to resorb bone–which then “eat away” the root of the tooth.
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Dr. Gregory S. Coakley
Dr. Coakley,
I had regular metal braces on my teeth when I was a teenager about 25 years ago. I unfortunately lost my retainer about 23 years ago. Since that time my teeth have shifted back almost to where they started; I have a gap between my front teeth again and on the bottom my front teeth are rotated. I couldn’t really see myself wearing metal braces again, do you think Invisalign would work?
Invisalign was essentially created to fix the types of problems that occur in patients that once had orthodontic treatment but whose teeth are now relapsing. From your description, it sounds like Invisalign should work to correct your issues and could take as little as 20 weeks with Invisalign Express.
There are a number of limiting factors in using Invisalign, though: physical limitations of the aligners as well as behavioral factors, and each case has to be examined closely. For an example of a physical limitation, because of the way the aligner system attaches to the teeth, Invisalign is not good at moving teeth “up and down.” Difficulty is also presented in rotating pre-molars because the round shape doesn’t provide much “grip” for the aligner.
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