Orthodontic Treatment
Great results depend on great bracket placement and how your braces work and provide perfectly aligned teeth can depend on a clinician’s skill.
Your orthodontic clinician will have undergone specialist training and have amassed years of experience in knowing precisely where to place the bracket on each of your teeth to ensure you get an outstanding result.
The brackets are placed in their ideal position on each tooth and a very thin, flexible wire is threaded and held into each of the brackets, resulting in a very higgledy-piggledy archwire.
Archwires start life as a horse-shoe shape and are made from different metals all with ‘memory’ – the archwire is designed to want to spring back to its original shape and its this that applies the pressure to the teeth and encourage teeth to move into the newly aligned position, for example a tooth that is twisted will be pulled to turn and face the right way.
The process of teeth moving in this way is called remodelling. When pressure is put on the tooth, cells called osteoblasts and osteoclasts form around the tooth’s root. The pressure of the wire and the osteoblasts and osteoclasts create a negative pressure on one side of the tooth. Here, bone is removed and on the other side of the tooth, bone is reformed. The tooth slowly moves into the correct position as the gentle pressure is put on the tooth and the bone of the tooth and the jaw remodel.
This process can only occur if constant pressure is applied to the tooth (which is why, when patients have Invisalign, it is so important to wear the aligners for 22hours a day and why orthodontists are often strict about their patients keeping their adjustment schedule).
As bone is absorbed on one side and deposited on the other side, the tooth can move. Once the pressure stops, like when the braces are removed, the tooth will begin to settle into its new position.
It is possible, however, that it could start to drift back to its old position. This is why patients are always given retainers, so that the teeth will be kept in their current position and are not allowed to relapse to their previous crooked state.
At Orthodontic Gallery we offer both fixed and removable retainers as a belt and braces (excuse the pun!) way of ensuring you are delighted with your result and that it lasts a lifetime.