Early orthodontics is basically doing orthodontic work while a child still has a mixture of primary (baby) and permanent teeth. This typically occurs between the ages of 7 to 12 although this can vary depending on the dental development stage of the child.
The advantage of early treatment is that the early diagnosis and treatment of your child may help an orthodontic problem earlier whilst often minimizing more serious orthodontic problems from occurring. By lessening these problems early, later orthodontic treatment may be shorter and easier (or not required in some cases).
Partial Braces are braces worn on the adult teeth, while your child still has primary teeth. These normally only involve the front 4 incisors and the first adult molar. This may or may not be used in conjunction with springs which help with some expansion. These are typically used to help resolve crowding in younger children.
Jaw expansion is typically done with maxillary expanders (more information here). These can either be removable or fixed. Maxillary expanders help to widen the upper jaw by pushing the teeth and bone outwards, and typically involve turning a super screw.
Mandibular advancement devices (functional appliances) include the MARA appliance, Herbst appliance, Twin-Block appliance or Clear Aligners (Angel Aligner A6). Again, these can be removable or fixed. These appliances help to position the lower jaw in a more forward position, thereby encouraging faster growth of the lower jaw into a more favourable position (eliminating an overjet).
Early treatment typically ranges from 6 to 18 months. This varies depending on the complexity of treatment.
Orthodontics is not just simply about straightening teeth. Here at Dental at Keys we aim to create a beautiful full smiles. We pay particular attention to the curvature, width and height of the smile. All of these aspects involve a lot more work than just straight teeth. The last thing we want for you is to have a flat straight smile (ie. Denture smile).
We also pay great attention to the profile of your face. Not only should your smile be full, but your facial profile should match it is as well. There is no point in extracting teeth in a patient who already has a sunken profile. Similarly, patients with lips that are too full should not have this worsen. This is why we say we treat the face, and not just the teeth.
It’s time for the school holidays soon. Have you started noticing that kids are getting braces and plates younger and younger than when you were at school. Why is this?
There is a big push towards early intervention orthodontic treatment. Lots of fancy words but it essentially means that when kids have problems with crowding/bite that they can be seen earlier and hopefully get the problems corrected earlier too.
As with all things, it’s not suitable for every cases and needs to assessed by the dentist.
The most common problem is crowding of the teeth where it looks like there are too many teeth for such a little mouth! In cases like these, sometimes a plate is fixed to open up the mouth and slowly expand to make room for the teeth.
Another problem is when a bottom tooth bites on the outside of the top tooth! This can create a lot of permanent damage on the top tooth so early treatment moves the tooth back where it is meant to be!
If you’re not sure about your kid’s teeth and have any questions, let us know.
Dr Bruno does early intervention orthodontics at Dental at Keys so he can do a consult for you!
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