Here is the case of a young woman who came to our practice complaining of jaw pain (TMJ).
For several years she had noticed more and more noise and crepitus when opening and closing her mouth, and she had also noticed increasingly frequent headaches and earache, which was stopping her living a normal life
In the clinical examination we saw that the patient had a severe class II with considerable compression of both the upper and lower arch, a deviated midline and, most worrying of all, severe canting of the occlusal plane, which meant one of the jaw joints was impacted in the glenoid fossa (very close to the inner ear, which is why many people mistake these joint problems for earache)
TREATMENT:
Clear aligners
DURATION:
A year and a half
Planning the case
Once we had completed the full study we carry out on every case, we decided to solve it using the Invisalign clear aligner system, without any extractions
We solved the case in 2 stages of treatment, as we usually do and as in 99% of our clear aligner cases. Reaching this result took 21 aligners in the 1st stage of treatment and 14 in the second, until we achieved the ideal result
The aligners were changed alternating stages every 2 weeks or 10 days, taking into account at all times the condition of the patient’s joint.
The case was solved in 18 months of treatment with an excellent occlusal and functional result, along with a lovely improvement in the patient’s facial appearance and smile.
