Hey, good morning there Celina and Prosper.
This is Dr. Rouse here from Open Late Dentistry and Orthodontics, coming at you with another Orthodontic topic I get questions on: limiting the time and visits to get the best smile at the end of braces. So I’m discussing proper tracking with your aligners today.
We offer two basic types of braces: the first one would be traditional bracket and wires, and that is usually, you know, for middle school or high school, and then we also offer clear aligner trays similar to Invisalign, or more recently some of the at-home ones where you receive the trays yourself.
In this series trying to convince you that you do need a professional to help you, and we are here to get you the best results using the latest technology!
In that vein I wanted to make a video about some of the rules that we usually ask our patients to follow in order to get the best results, and to finish the quickest. So if you are like me, you want to get started and you want to be done.
Trying to make the easiest, most succinct way for our patients to know exactly what’s expected; so that you could finish in the shortest amount of time.
I want to talk about virtually tracking from home, and that’s one of the services that we offer.
It’s almost like a concierge service, where we use email and we use technology to have you do a lot of this at home and only come to our office when you need to. Especially in the midst of what’s going on right now. We’re trying to limit the time that people spend in our office.
We are here for you though. If something happens, like you break a bracket with traditional Orthodontics or your trays are going to plan, we want to jump on that as quickly as possible so you don’t waste time.
If you’re in traditional ortho or if you’re doing clear aligners, and you need another scan of your teeth, we may ask you to come back in. So let’s start by talking about your new best friend here.
That is going to be what we call “Chewies”! They are a tool that’s designed to help your tray go all the way down. So of course whenever you change to a new tray it’s going to be a little bit of a difference from the previous tray that you were in. In order to get it to go all the way down properly. We really recommend using this device.
We’ll talk to you all about how long to use it, and when to use it, but especially when you change from tray to tray it is great! This is a game changer for our Orthodontic patients. We give you a package of these actually, when you start treatment. Just because we want to make sure you have all the tools to do the job properly.
The other thing that we ask you to do is to send us photos, so we can know if you’re tracking properly.
We want to make sure that you finish all the movements from one tray before you move on to the next one. So typically we can go anywhere from 7 to 14 days, in one tray before we go to the next tray.
So some people track faster, some people don’t. It just depends on your bone and your body, on how fast the teeth can move through the bone, and we find that a lot of our patients; if they’re following all the rules, and all the things that we give you; they finish right on time. There’s no reason you should not. And we do have another video on average time for treatment.
So if at all possible to achieve the similar result; we would recommend aligners over your straight bracket and wires. We have a lot of parents who go “my kid’s not going to do this” by themselves and want to ensure tracking is happening 24 hours a day.
And that’s why we offer straight wire and brackets.
We do have some complex cases that are not possible with clear aligners and depending on your expectations we will find out how to get that A+ smile that you’re looking for.
But more and more companies are coming out with inventive ways to keep people in these clear trays, because they know that especially adults working with the public, and people seeing your teeth; a lot more people are demanding this type of treatment.
We do curb side delivery. So if you drive up, we’ll do curbside service for you to take out your next trays. We are about eliminating the obstacles here, people 🙂
If you send in photos, and the plastic is touching the edge of all of your teeth, you are golden. Send us the photos and we will give you the green light to proceed.
See the video below but for those with minimal gaps between their trays and endges of teeth approximately 1mm. We just may recommend, “Hey, just hang in there stay with that tray for a little bit longer” and we will, you know, check back with you again.
We usually recommend a week for that, if it’s just a few days, I mean, you know you can see but we want to make sure you finish with one tray before you move to the next one. We don’t want to do what’s called a “revision”, and I don’t. If you’ve ever been through the first round of braces and you got tired from these aligners. It’s probably because there just isn’t enough communication between you, and the dental office. So we want to stay in constant contact with you. We don’t want you going off on your own.
We need you to stick with us as like we were your personal trainer, and we just stay with you, and we say “hey what’s going on? Tell us about it”. You can send us more photos or we can have you come in, if we need to. But we never want you to veer off, because then we’ll get into what we call “revisions”.
And that’s where we have to have you come back in. We have to rescan you, and it’s sort of a pain.
Especially if they have to have more trays made.
So it’s not what we want. We want exactly what we discussed about from the first appointment, where we say “Hey, this is how long it’s going to to take, these are the rules, and if you stick with all that I promise you; it is going to be such a great experience that you will want to tell everybody to come see us”. So let’s go to the next one here. This is that last category and I really don’t even want to talk about it, because we shouldn’t have too many people going in this direction, but you can see in that top right where we placed an attachment, and if you have any questions about attachments; I actually made another video in this series about attachments, but you can see that little bubble in the top-right, hopefully.
That is where the tray is not even going down around the attachment, and these are two different photos.
We will usually ask you to send in a video, and then we just take still frames from the video, which is usually only like 5 or 10 seconds and we go on, we go over in depth with you on how to take those videos, but it’s a quick check-in and when you send that in to us, we can take very accurate still frames, like here in this slide.
And just make sure that you’re tracking properly. But in this case, we might even have you come back in, and go over “Hey, this is sort of where you’re missing out, or this is how to use the tools that were giving you”, and sort of find out a little bit about what’s going on there.
So you can see that guy in the bottom right, a little bit of work to do but don’t worry. Everything’s going to finish just fine. It just may take a little bit longer than we were hoping for.
But again, our goal is to stay in such close contact with you, that you don’t feel like you’re doing this alone.
So I always want you to think about it like this; you’re in the middle, but you have a team of people that are around you to help you, and you know, that’s our main goal is that that you don’t have to go at this alone.
I know that there are a lot of options out there, and there are a lot of people that say “Hey, you can do this yourself“.
But as a as a professional, trust me, you do not want to do this on your own. You want to have somebody evaluate your gums, evaluate your mouth first. You want to have somebody who cleans your teeth during the process, and make sure that you’re not getting cavities from these trays.
You want to make sure that you’re being taken care of the whole time, because your smile is you know, one of the first things people notice about you, but also just for the health of the teeth and everything. I mean, this can be a huge blessing to have these trays, and sometimes it could be a curse. So we want to make sure that we’re there to help you make the right decision, find the right option for you in terms of straightening your teeth, and then be there through the process with you.
And then again, like I said, we offer curbside pickup.
We are trying to limit the number of times you have to come to the office, and also limit all the obstacles that go along with straightening your teeth. So sometimes it’s financial, sometimes it’s time. It’s usually time and money.
But if it’s anything else that you know, that I haven’t a thought of, I would love to hear it.
On, you know, what’s standing between you and the perfect smile that you’ve always dreamed of. So we are in the business of changing lives, and doing cosmetic dentistry, and doing orthodontics and all kinds of surgeries and things. It’s really like my passion. So hopefully, you can tell that from these videos that I’m making, and then also give me a call. Let’s talk about it 972-885-9670.
We look forward to hearing you, hearing from you soon.
And I did want to let you know that we have, you know, just a couple specials here again. This is to, you know, just come in and chat. Let’s talk about how to design your smile, and let’s talk about your orthodontic needs, and fixing your teeth, and straightening them. To hopefully prevent costly dental work down the road.
I have so many people that don’t really need crowns, don’t really need fillings. If they just would have gotten their teeth straightened.
So anyways, if you are interested in any of these, please give us a call again. It’s down there in the bottom right but 972-885-9670.
We look forward to hearing from you soon, and I hope you all have a great day. It’s fantastic weather again out here. It is.
It’s summer time in Texas.
So it is hot, but, you know, really enjoying doing these videos, really enjoying feedback, and hopefully we can use these as some, you know, learning activities in the future, so that our patients will have extra supplements and things to reference, for their actual orthodontic needs.
So y’all take care.
Have a great day.
And look forward to the next video.
Bye.