Braces aren't just for kids anymore.
Tooth alignment can be changed at any age if your gums and bone
structure are healthy. We offer a variety of treatments that are
designed for different age groups, including adults. A new smile can
begin today.
Orthodontic treatment at later stages in
life can dramatically improve your personal appearance and
self-esteem. Improving the health of your teeth and gums is equally
important. Crooked teeth and a bad bite can contribute to gum and
bone loss, tooth decay, abnormal wear of the tooth enamel and
surfaces.
Good news! The new techniques and
appliances we use greatly reduce discomfort levels, decrease the
frequency of visits, shorten treatment time and may allow you to
choose from several options. Your options may include metal braces,
translucent braces or transparent aligners that can be worn to
improve mild cases of misaligned teeth.
A growing proportion of patients are
adults, and they agree that it's never too late to improve their
greatest asset - their smile.
As an adult, orthodontic treatment is
carried out in a very similar way to when you are in your teens. The
teeth can be moved using the same techniques as in teenagers, the
only limitations are that, because you are no longer growing,
correction of the jaw relationships to each other is not possible.
But the teeth can be moved to help disguise a milder underlying
mismatch of jaw sizes. If the discrepancy is too great, for example
if there is a very small bottom jaw in relation to the top jaw, it
may be necessary to move a jaw surgically to get a complete bite
correction.
Because the bone in the jaws is denser
and has a slower replacement rate in an adult, rather than when you
are in your teens, getting the teeth moving takes slightly longer,
and tends to be slightly slower once they are moving, which makes
accurate treatment time more difficult to predict.
The actual movement of the teeth
progresses in the same way as for teenagers. Sometimes when teeth
have been extracted prior to orthodontic treatment commencing,
complete space closure is impossible due to the bony ridge being
thinner than a tooth width and a residual space remains at the end
of treatment.
We have a number of options for adult
treatment including:
·
Different combinations of metal and ceramic traditional fixed
appliances.
·
Invisalign (invisible braces), which is a technique which uses
a series of very thin mouthguard type appliances to align the teeth.
·
Removable appliances for more limited changes.
Each technique does have limitations and
individual assessment is essential when considering any of the
options above.
At the end of treatment, the teeth need
to be held in the finished position to allow the fibres in the gums
to remodel in the new position. This only starts once the braces are
off and can easily take up to 18 months to complete in adults.
Retention is essential and as important as the active treatment,
because teeth move throughout life, whether braces have been used or
not, (which usually expresses itself as increased crowding in the
lower front region). If no movement of your teeth is important to
you, I advise a life-long commitment to retainer wear is essential.