Treatment Options
So, last week, a 35 year old male patient came in with moderately crooked teeth. The teeth themselves were pretty- no stains or old fillings or cavities- but the teeth were crowded and twisted. He was looking for Invisalign orthodontic treatment, the series of computer-generated clear plastic aligners that move teeth without gluing brackets onto them. So, we looked at his teeth and came up with three treatment options, which I will lay out below, from least beneficial to best: With regards to the crowding of his front teeth, Invisalign wouldn’t be a good treatment option because of a serious mal-alignment problem between his upper and lower back teeth, which clinical experience as shown Invisalign just can’t fix. We mentioned porcelain veneers, layers of porcelain as little as three-tenths of a millimeter thick which are bonded to the front surfaces of the teeth. This process takes only two weeks and requires minimal tooth-structure reduction. The negative is that some