Metal Mouth Message Board

You may also want to look up Dr. Ed Mah, a very nice guy and excellent orthodontist.

I think the association of NSAIDS slowing tooth movement is more theoretical than practical. The study that you guys cited from the pharmacologic journal analyzed other articles to look for an association, but it looks like these articles were looking at movement in animals. That is helpful, but I w...

Most orthodontists don't use a wire as thin as 0.010 inches, I would say the most common "thinnest" wire is 0.014" in diameter. If the tech told you the new one is an "18", I would guess that it is round, rather than rectangular. But, myabe not. The move from a 0.014 nickel ...

I would tend to agree; the fee may not be that much reduced because of the high cost of the hospital fees. As far as quality you may actually get better care at a university. It is likely they do more surgeries than a surgeon in private practice, and have quite a bit of experience. The oral surgery ...

It can change the shape and angle of the nose, especially in relation to your upper lip, and especially if you are having your jaw moved forward. It sounds like you may want to ask your surgeon about this if it concerns you.

It's not too late, if you wanted to get a second opinion, I would do it immediately, before appliances are placed. Spacers are no big deal in the scheme of treatment, but once you get appliances in, that's when it becomes a little more difficult, but not impossible to switch doctors. Getting a secon...

I would recommend doing what your orthodontist recommended! I know it doesn't sound like much fun, but either would getting braces again because your teeth shifted around. Just think of all the work you've already put into it, you don't want to see that flushed down the drain! And I guess you're cow...

I'm very sorry to hear about your experience. I would recommend getting a second opinion from a local orthodontist, or even a couple of them! They may be able to give you another perspective or other ideas. Just to clear a few things up, if he is a cosmetic dentist, he is not an orthodontist, and no...

i agree; it isn't very easy, but it can be done. I would choose that route for myself, too, but you have to understand it will most likely lengthen your treatment time considerably!

I can't speak for the orthodontists your daughter has seen in the past, but as much as we try to correct things without surgery, sometimes it is impossible to truly correct a problem unless surgery is done, no matter the skill of the orthodontist. We can do quite a bit to correct the positions of th...

The amount of experience someone has certainly matters, the more people you see and the more you do a certain thing, the larger "pool" of experience you have to pull from when a situation arises. Invisalign is not a miracle appliance though, and I am a little suspicious of overblown expect...

Most likely, archwires will be used to do that; but elastics or an expander could also be used, especially if the expansion is a little more than 2 mm. Your ortho will be able to fill you in on what will be the best way to approach things!

As an orthodontist, I have an obvious bias. But as the others have said, we orthodontists specialize in moving teeth; it's all we do all day, every day. I spent three years in a residency learning how to move teeth, learning everything about the simplest procedures and learning quite a bit about the...

That is very common for pre-surgical treatment. Often, we will extract teeth and make the bite worse in preparation to surgery. Before orthodontics, the teeth will often times compensate for the jaws being way out of whack by tipping too far forward or too far back. We then use the braces to reverse...

I sounds like inflamation or swelling. If that is the only area that you are having that problem, it could be a couple of things. Maybe you're having a hard time keeping that area clean, and the builup of plaque is causing inflamation. It could also be that you traumatized the area, maybe with a har...