What You Might Not Know about Clear Aligners in 2020

Clear aligners have been an orthodontic treatment option for over two decades. As you can imagine, the aligners have changed a lot over that time. Today, what we can do with clear aligner therapy is almost anything.

 

Of course, the most important thing you should know about clear aligners is that you have to wear them for them to work—and not just at night. It would be best if you had consistent pressure of the trays on your teeth to move them into position accurately and efficiently.

 

There are additional essential considerations that go beyond your adherence. All clear aligner products are not equal. Experts say that the most significant factor in providing predictable treatment is the efficacy of the product. Factors that contribute to a product’s effectiveness are the technology that makes it possible to digitally treatment plan, the materials that make the aligner itself, and the manufacturing capability of the trays that can express the desired movement prescribed by the doctor in the treatment plan.

 

Here at Bloom Orthodontics in Long Beach, we partner with Align Technology and their Invisalign® system. You likely have heard of Invisalign before; they do a lot of marketing to patients about their system. Also, they were the first company to bring digital clear aligner therapy to the practice of orthodontics.

 

Invisalign owns iTero®, which is the brand of digital scanner we use instead of X-rays to get an idea of what is going on in your mouth. To you, it means we don’t need to take an impression with the goop in your mouth before we start treatment. To us, it means we have a digital process for treating your smile with the Invisalign system from end-to-end.

 

Starting with an iTero scan gives us new opportunities to provide you with a better understanding and view of your current and future smile. The scan from our iTero scanner works with the Invisalign Go system to treatment plan the way we would correct any issues in your smile. In other words, it creates a simulated outcome using time-lapse programming and the scan of your mouth. So, when you are sitting in our chair, you can see what your smile might look like if you participated in Invisalign therapy.

 

There are a few reasons that Invisalign can produce such great results for your smile. First, they were the first-to-market, the pioneers in developing the biomechanics of tooth movement with clear aligners. Also, they have 23 years of treatments and outcomes from over 7.5 million patients to help them make the innovations that make your treatment go faster and give you the results we expected. Another reason they have such great results is that Invisalign changed the plastic they use for their trays, which they call SmartTrack®, released in 2013. Finally, they produce nearly 500,000 (450,000) clear aligner trays a day.

 

Another product by our partner is called Invisalign First. It treats young and growing children using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to recognize eruption and manage tooth movement through those growing stages. Teenagers and even children as young as seven have used this system.

 

All of these reasons—the advanced treatment planning, the education they provide, the SmartTrack technology, and more—are why we chose the Invisalign system to treat our clear aligner cases. While we don’t recommend clear aligners for every patient, there are many of them that we do. If you think you might be a candidate for clear aligners in your treatment, be sure to ask us at your consultation. We would love to discuss how they could help improve your smile.

To schedule your free consultation today, call Bloom Orthodontics office in Long Beach at 562-421-8883.

 

Bloom Orthodontics in Long Beach has a long history of improving our patients’ smiles. We provide modern orthodontic treatments delivered with old fashioned excellence in patient experience. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.