Metal Mouth Message Board

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i am currently in invisalign and aboutto start braces. as far as the conflicting opinions. i would tend to go with the concensus. if 4 out of 5 say no to invisalign, then i might avoid it.
my take on invisalign is that it is good for reltivly minor problems; spaces, minor crowding. it is not good for correcting ones bite and it may cause the bite to be off as it straihtens the upper arch independantly of the lower. so they may not function together perfectly when all is said and done.
my teeth were straight when i started with invisalign as i had braces as a teenager, and just ahd some very minor crowding. that said my bite is not good after invisalign. only two molars on my left and my front incisors now make contact. i am not comfortable with this as i know it will cause other problems, including TMJ, down the road. so into ceramics i go.
all that said there are some people who do get results they are happy with.
the bumps or attachments, are (approximatally) tooth colored bumps of cement on the outer edge of some teeth that the aligner can grab to use as leverage. ill post some pics when i get a chance. there is a good yahoo group for invisalign you may wish to check out.
chris

I just started invisalign this past week. Our top teeth sound exactly alike. I too have the same tooth pushed very far back and my front teeth tilt inward somewhat. I am using invisalign for that. I am 35 and never had braces as a teenager but finally decided to try invisalign. I was told that I was not a good case by several orthos, but mainly because of the amount of crowding on the bottom . I don't think the top was ever an issue. I need 38 aligners on the top with very minimal sanding in between. My clincheck showed that my teeth would appear straightened at 12 aligners ( Yeah!!!) - the rest would be for aligning the back etc. I have one bump(attachment ) on the top and it's the 3rd tooth -the one right next to the second tooth that looks like it's missing because it's pushed back so far. This helps to pull that tooth back and make room for the second tooth. The bottom has 3 attachments because I had to have an extraction of my lower front tooth to make room . Hope this helps as you gather info.! Goodluck!!!

annel wrote:I just started invisalign this past week. Our top teeth sound exactly alike.

Thank you for responding! I have crowding on the bottom also, and they want to do an extraction there, so it really sounds like we have similar issues. While I know I should get the crowding taken care of, it's really the top tooth that is set back that bothers me (cosmeticly).

Keep the responses coming - I'd love to hear from those who have had invisalign for awhile now so I can get an idea of what to expect through the treatment.

~S

I also was only worried about getting my top teeth fixed as it was what bothered me the most when I smiled , but my ortho would only do invisalign if I agreed to do top & bottom and had the bottom extraction. I know he's right, but I wish I didn't have the big space below right now!!!

I'd go with the concensus on not using Invisalign. Invisalign is good for very minor issues but for other problems it falls short. The problem is Invisalign doesn't take into consideration how your teeth need to come together to bite properly. If you really want to do Invisalign and don't mind maybe needing to finish in braces drill that ortho to make sure if your treatment goes that way you won't be charged anything more and that you hold the ultimate say on if/when traditional braces would be used.

Good luck!

I'd agree that if 4 of 5 are saying no to Invisalign I'd go with their opnion. I was in Invisalign for 2 years (after being quoted a treatment time of 12-15 months) and still wasn't happy with the results. I thought I had minor issues to fix which the ortho concurred with when I had my initial consultation. I'm now in traditional braces wishing I would have just started with them. I'd be done now.

Good luck with whatever decision you make.

I had them and I have very minor teeth problems. A gap and a tooth needed to be pulled down more. They didn't fix either and I ended up having to get metal braces. The invisalign delayed it by 5 months.

The braces I have now would have been off 5 months sooner if I had just chosen metal first.

Pound for pound invisalign likely cannot give the same results as braces. If you give any orthodontist one shot to make something dead on perfect or close to it - its braces all the way.

With a tooth that is sitting back: when it is leaned forward out of crossbite there is a problem. The root of the tooth is still "back". Well, teeth seek to be lined up under their roots: ie there is alot of potential for relapse. With braces and wires. the root can be "torqued" forward and looks better.

I am just one orthodontist, not a consnesus but I have very mixed feelings about Invisalign. It is a good practice builder but my patients almost always end up in braces. It winds up taking longer than expected, and being more expensive than expected (for me and you).
Mind you some cases are good candidates. I personally feel that in my area the general dentists seem to take on the more challenging cases than the ortho's... ...and we re-treat alot of them in braces. Not that they are not good Invisalign doctors - on the contrary, some are great. But orthodontists are trained more to diagnose the exact problems. Kind of a case of :

"you don't know what you don't know, so you think you know more than you really do. "

Not always but sometimes.


Dr.J

Let me add that my previous post was not a slam against GP's doing ortho. There are probably some GP's that are better at orthodonitcs than some orthodontists. I was just generalizing....

Dr.J

Thanks again for all the info...

I think that I have decided that Invisalign is probably not the best bet. It was a General Dentist that highly recommended it, and mostly orthodontists that did not.

I am going to try to go with linguals on top and ceramics on the bottom, and get it done right the first time. I haven't had a consult regarding linguals yet, though, so there's always a chance I'll have to go with ceramics all around.

I *really* hoped Invisalign would work, but after all the reports of bite issues (right now my problems are purely cosmetic - I don't want to cause worse problems than I already have!) I just think it's best to go with what most experts KNOW works, and doesn't generally cause worse problems.

Thanks everyone!

~S

So far I am SO happy with invisalign. I am on aligner 9 of 26 - my teeth are perfectly straight except for 3 teeth that were pushed into a crossbite when my wisdom teeth grew in (why didn't my dentist tell me to get them out!) After reading post after post on here, I was so skeptical...but I can see it changing and I am SO happy so far. I can see such a difference already. My reasons for going to invisalign were purely cosmetic - I hated how my 3 teeth looked pushed back - and I wouldn't have gotten regular braces. I will keep updating my progress.