- Full Braces/ Partial Braces
- Elastics (rubberbands)
- Bite Plate/ Turbo
- Retainers (wear and care)
- Rapid Palatal Expander
- Herbst
- Habit Appliance
- Pendulum-Pendex Appliance
- Lingual Arch/ Transpalatal Bar
- Quad-helix Expander
- Schwartz Appliance
- Mara Appliance
- Temporary Anchorage Devices or TADs (Temporary Implants)
- Head Gear/ Face Mask
Full braces are quite common these days. This means you will have brackets or attachments on all your teeth both top and bottom. Very often the movement of the teeth cannot be attributed to the braces themselves, actually the braces are just handles where the wires, springs, rubber-bands and other auxiliaries are attached to. All of them together are what ultimately cause the teeth to move.
It is not uncommon to have only partial braces, perhaps just on top, bottom or just not on all the teeth. Sometimes treatments starts with only one arch or partial braces on both arches; sometimes treatment is done with partial braces from beginning to end. A good example of partial braces is the 2x4 appliance (two bands or metal rings on the six year old molars and four brackets on the front four teeth). Dr. J.C. uses partial braces sometimes, when there are still many un-erupted permanent teeth and there is a need for early treatment.
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Elastics (rubberbands)
During various phases of treatment, small elastics or rubber bands are used as a gentle but continuous force to help individual tooth movement or the aligning of one arch in relation to the other. The results expected from elastics cannot be accomplished any other way. The braces, wires, coil-springs or any other auxiliaries can not do what elastics can; very often no elastics simply translates into no treatment success!!
They are to be worn 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Teeth have never failed to move when elastics are worn consistently and as directed but when they are worn one day and left off the next, treatment slows to a standstill because you constantly loose the little success accomplished when wearing them!
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Elastics will make your teeth sore or tender. Usually, after two or four days, any discomfort from the elastics disappears. If you don’t wear them consistently you will never get passed that discomfort stage and jeopardize your entire treatment: teeth are never still, they go forward when rubber-bands are on and backwards when they are off! Wearing them half the time is the same as not wearing them at all !!
Bite Plate/ Turbo
This appliance is used, very often along with braces, to change the way
you bite. In particular situations where in a vertical plane of space
your upper front teeth over-lap your bottom anterior teeth in excess
(deep over-bite). This appliance prevents your posterior teeth from
biting for a while. It is mostly anterior, as the one shown in the
picture, but it could be posterior too, in other words, over your molars
or back teeth.
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Retainers (wear and care)
If you are wearing braces, you will wear a retainer after you are done with active treatment. Unfortunately, more often than not, teeth will want to move back to their original crooked position (even teeth that have never been moved will always tend to move into a worse position!). Retainers are designed to keep your perfect teeth in the position you worked so hard to attain. There are many types of retainers, some can move teeth, some are not designed to do so, some are to be worn all the time, some only at nights. Dr. J.C. will explain which one you’ll be requiring and how often you’ll have to use it.
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Rapid Palatal Expander
There are certain types of orthodontic problems that are caused by upper jaws that are too narrow to accommodate all the teeth or bite correctly with the lower teeth, leading to posterior cross-bites or under-bites of the molars on either or both sides. In any of these situations palatal expanders are most helpful.
This device is fixed to the teeth and has a screw in its mid-line that must be turned by you or your parents, every day for two or three weeks, usually once in the morning and once at night. The palate will be widened enough in a matter of two, three or four weeks. When expansion is completed, turning the screw stops and the appliance will be left in the mouth for approximately another 4 months before removing it.
Even though the procedure is called Rapid Palatal Expansion it is not as drastic as it may sound. The maxilla, or upper jaw, is made up of two separate bones joined in the center by a suture, which allows it to be painlessly separated and spread. Once this has occurred, the two separated halves become knit back together by new bone that is laid down in between. Temporarily you may see a space develop between your upper two front teeth. This is normal and will slowly go away in a few days.
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This appliance is very effective in growing patients where the main goal is to correct a jaw size discrepancy where the upper teeth appear to be well ahead of the lower (commonly referred to as over-bite). It is fixed to the molars and it can be worn along with regular braces most of the time. It is one of Dr. J.C.’s favorites due to the fact that it can replace the need for head-gear often.
Habit Appliance
There are many habits that can be considered the main culprits at the time of judging a malocclusion (bad-bite). Those habits need to be corrected in order for the orthodontic treatment to be successful and in many cases to guarantee the stability of the bite once braces are off (a prevalent bad habit can bring bad-bites back, even after comprehensive orthodontic treatment has been completed!) For example, a thumb sucking habit or a lingual thrust habit (placing the tongue between teeth when swallowing), can cause an open bite as seen in the upper left. Two habit-breaking appliances are depicted in the center and upper right.
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Pendulum-Pendex Appliance
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This appliance is quite popular in our practice because it is commonly used with success in cases where, even though apparently necessary, we want to avoid the extraction of bicuspids in the upper arch. Sometimes to relieve pronounced crowding of teeth in the upper jaw or to correct a malocclusion (bad-bite), extraction of bicuspids (small molars behind the eye teeth) becomes a strong option. We can create the space otherwise only attainable by extractions with the use of the Pendulum-Pendex Appliance by driving the molars posteriorly and expanding the upper jaw. This appliance is usually worn before full braces on the upper arch and works in five or eight months.
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Lingual Arch/ Transpalatal Bar
This appliance is specifically designed to hold teeth in a particular position. Dr. J.C. uses them in conjunction with the Pendulum-Pendex, after the posterior teeth have been driven as far back as needed, to guarantee the molars will maintain their new position. They are common in our office also to hold lower molars back, saving the necessary space for canines (eye-teeth) and bicuspids (small molars behind the eye-teeth) to erupt undisturbed. They can also be used to widen the arches in cases where they have been determined too narrow.
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Quad-helix Expander
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Specially designed for expansion of the upper arch, this appliance is widely used in our practice, specially in early treatment (when not all the permanent teeth are present yet), to provide enough space for the permanents to erupt and/or to correct posterior cross-bites (under-bites in either or both sides of the posterior teeth). |
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The main Characteristic of this appliance is that it has an expansion screw built into it. It is removable so to allow for the patient to keep his or her mouth clean, but it is designed to be worn virtually 24 hours a day. We use it in our office for patients that have mixed dentitions (mix between permanent and baby teeth) and could benefit from expansion in their dental arches, very often to provide extra space to allow for the eruption of permanent teeth. |
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This appliance is very similar to the Herbst appliance in what it is designed to do for our patients. It is used for patients that have their upper dentition located excessively ahead of their lower teeth, creating what is commonly referred to as an overbite; this usually associated to discrepancies in the location of the maxillary bones that hold the teeth more than the teeth themselves. It is commonly used in growing patients. It is an alternative to Head Gear and that is the reason why it is popular in our office where we strive to avoid any unsightly Extra Oral Force like Head Gear. |
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Temporary Anchorage Devices or TADs (Temporary Implants) The job of the orthodontist would be futile with out anchorage. Anchorage could be a tooth or group of teeth from where we gain support or leverage to move other teeth. Sometimes due to missing teeth or the intricate nature of the particular tooth movement that is needed, using teeth as anchors is impractical or even impossible. The option of moving teeth from anchors located directly in the adjacent bone is just another one of the options we have to move teeth to the place we want. Temporary Anchorage Devices are screws specially designed to be implanted on the maxillary or mandibular bone with out any complicated surgical procedures, sometimes, although not always, with out even injections of anesthesia! They are temporary and take out once the desired movement is accomplished. |
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Head Gear/ Face Mask
These are perhaps the appliances most hated not only by our patients in general but by our staff and Dr. J.C. himself. Although agreeably unsightly, these appliances are also recognized to offer great benefits no other appliance can. They connect the inside of the mouth with support locations in the outside (back of the neck, chin, fore-head, etc), and are used to move or hold teeth and in some cases even to manipulate the growth of the bones that hold those teeth.
