How did our Sendhil dental doctors solve a seven-year braces treatment in just a year?

Smiling is more than just a happy facial expression because having a pleasant smile is one of the crucial building blocks for an attractive presence. Smiling makes people feel more confident, regardless of their age. On the flip side, having a suboptimal smile makes a person feel embarrassed and consequently develop social anxiety.

Generally, pre-teens and teenagers are overly concerned about their physical appearance. They will feel inferior if they find that their look falls short of expectations. They may feel challenging to socialize with others.

Our dental team has helped one of such teenagers to overcome his discomfort about his unattractive smile that had impacted his appearance for years. The 17-year-old young champ had a large gap in his upper front teeth. He received dental braces from another dental practitioner to close the space when he was 10.

The teeth movement activities remained neutral even though he wore braces for 7 years. He was distraught by this and contacted Sendhil dental clinic for more promising solutions.

When we analyzed his teeth and gums, we detected that one of his permanent teeth did not form naturally, due to which the large spacing in the upper jaw occurred. Therefore, our orthodontists proposed a 2-phase treatment plan to the patient.

The first phase involves orthodontic correction to the best possible limit and the second phase involves digital smile designing and prosthetic restoration.

Phase 1

We preferred metal braces over clear aligners because an extra force had to be exerted to shift his crooked teeth. Likely, Invisalign takes more time to move the teeth. Moreover, the patient asked us to solve his problem as quickly as possible.

We understood his plight and demonstrated why we prescribed traditional braces. After getting consent from the patient, we delivered a custom-made metal brace to him.

With constant monitoring and periodical adjustment, the teeth were moved to their respective positions in one year.

Phase 2

After the teeth were correctly aligned, we proceeded with activities to close the gap caused by the unerupted adult tooth.

It started with digital smile design, which entails digitally creating the teeth’ form, shape, and size. The clinical findings we observed in this stage were sent to our laboratory and fabricated a dental bridge.

A dental bridge is a prosthetic appliance that can replace one or more missing teeth. It consists of a false tooth (to replace the missing tooth) with crowns on either side. Fixing this appliance requires anchorage from the tooth next to the missing tooth’s space.

Our prosthodontist positioned the bridge in the upper anterior gap by cementing the crowns to the neighboring teeth on each side. Thus the missing tooth problem is also addressed.

After a decade, the patient finally smiled more confidently and with joy. The appearance of the face has been improved drastically, and a more appealing smile has been delivered.

We advised the patient to wear a retainer to sustain the teeth in their correctly aligned positions. He conceded and is now wearing a permanent retainer for his lower teeth. We did not provide a separate retainer for the upper arch because the placed dental bridge will act as a retainer.

Final thoughts

Typically, permanent teeth start to erupt at the age of 6. By the age of 13 years, an individual gets 28 permanent teeth. The remaining four teeth are third molars that erupt between the ages of 17 and 21.

On rare occasions, syndromes like Cleidocranial dysplasia, GAPO syndrome, Rutherford syndrome, and Osteoglophonic dysplasia intervene in teeth eruption. As a consequence, one or a few adult teeth do not erupt. Dental difficulties from tooth misalignment will develop if one or more adult teeth remain unerupted.

Luckily, you can avert them if the problems in permanent teeth eruption are diagnosed and treated timely. It cannot be identified without a dentist’s help.

Hence, we advise every parent to get biannual dental checkups for their child until all of the little champs’ permanent teeth come in.