Orthodontic treatment for adults
Everything you need to know
Today I want to talk about something that comes up more and more among adults: orthodontic treatment for adults. A few years ago the idea of seeing someone aged 40, 50 or 60 wearing an orthodontic appliance might have surprised us. We associated appliances with children or teenagers, but not so much with adults. We also associated them purely with how well or badly positioned our teeth were, without considering other kinds of problems. Perhaps we thought that beyond a certain age we simply had to settle for the teeth we had, or the specialists of the day did not explain how important a good tooth position is if you want to avoid the problems caused by a bad bite.
The truth is that more and more adults come to our practice looking to solve problems with their teeth. Often they are aware of the problem that needs solving; other times it is we who explain how we have to start dealing with their case. Let me explain exactly what I mean by that.
People often come to us with gum problems, bone loss or tooth wear, looking for an effective solution. They are sometimes surprised when we tell them that the first thing they need is orthodontic treatment, because that is the only way to solve the problem at its root.
“If my teeth are straight… why do I need orthodontic treatment?”
In our daily work we aim to improve our patients’ health; of course we also want to improve the way their teeth look, but with excellent dentistry the two go hand in hand. And believe me when I say that in many cases we would not be doing excellent work if we did not start solving the cases we treat with good orthodontics.
Let me tell you about a real example, a patient who came to our clinic.
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His teeth were completely worn down and had also lost all their enamel surface. This patient was asking for an esthetic solution to his problem, because he looked in the mirror and did not like what he saw. Until he came to see us, it had never occurred to him that solving his problem would start with wearing an orthodontic appliance.
When we carried out the clinical examination, we confirmed that this patient’s teeth were indeed worn down and excessively short and unattractive. Look at the photograph and judge for yourself.
In a case like this, our job as dentists specializing in complex cases is to explain to the patient that his case cannot be solved with esthetic dentistry alone. He certainly needs it, but first we have to solve the problem of where his teeth sit, so that we can give him a complete solution that will last.
With this orthodontic treatment for adults we moved this patient’s teeth into the right position to create enough space between them to fit porcelain veneers. As time went by and the teeth wore down, they drifted, which meant there was not enough room for the porcelain when the veneers were made.
Once the orthodontic treatment was over, we moved on to crown lengthening. To do that we trimmed the gums so that more of the tooth was visible and the gum level of the four upper incisors matched that of the upper canines. Once the gums had healed, we whitened the patient’s teeth so that, when the porcelain veneers were fitted, their color would match that of the whitened teeth.
As you can see in the photographs, this patient’s smile has absolutely nothing to do with the one he had a few years ago, before coming to see us. The final result of this orthodontic treatment for adults case would not be the same if we had not followed a logical, professional sequence of steps, one that certainly had to start with orthodontics.
