5 Invisalign Accessories

Many dental patients select the procedures they desire. While adults prefer the discreet treatment approach of Invisalign, teenagers do not have issues with conventional treatments. Metal-free teeth straightening is possible with Invisalign.

Because of its greater flexibility, gentler process, quicker healing time, etc., Invisalign is a more comfortable treatment option. Although Invisalign appears natural, few people can tell if you wear braces. You can remove your aligner trays to eat whatever you like and put them back in once you’ve finished brushing your teeth.

However, after getting Invisalign treatment, there are accessories you need that might help in improving your smile experience. If you read further, you can learn about these accessories and that every patient using clear aligners should have a better treatment outcome.

What Essential Accessories Do You Need for Your Invisalign Treatment Journey?

1. You Need an Extra Case for Your Retainers

When straightening teeth with Invisalign, you will enjoy removing and wearing back your trays to have occasional snacks, drinks, and meals. However, if you must take out your Invisalign occasionally, ensure you still have a wear time of up to 22 hours daily.

Wearing your Invisalign trays for shorter periods per day can alter your treatment process. However, the point is that you need a case for your retainers to help you avoid losing your trays whenever they are off your mouth. You can ask your orthodontic specialist to prepare extra cases for you and also ensure to keep them in a clean and safe place.

Even though your orthodontist will provide you with one or two cases from the moment you start your treatment, you can still request two more for your kits or any other essential spots, such as your nightstand or study desk. Most Invisalign cases have functional features like embedded mirrors, perfect for you to go about with, especially when you need to remove and wear back your trays after a meal at a restaurant.

But you have many other options if you wish for more extravagant trays. You can opt for a clip-on case, an excellent choice for teens using Invisalign, or settle with many other elegant retainer cases available on many innovative platforms. All you need is a good-looking case for your retainers to remain clean and safely stored.

2. You Need Clear Aligner Mints or Chewies, On the Go

Clear Aligner Mints or Chewies

The essence of using any braces, whether traditional or explicit, is to have the same result as repositioning your teeth. Therefore, Invisalign shifts your teeth into a perfect order through orthodontic force. But your treatment only works if you wear your clear aligners correctly.

Over the years, orthodontic specialists have always provided their patients with a seating aid known as foam chewies. While this works all the time, chewies are convenient for Invisalign users on the go, but since you need to clean them consistently, they can accumulate bacteria and produce a funky smell if you fail to clean them as much as you should.

Therefore, you can use chewies-like movements. Movements are sugar-free mints with a vanishing groove that sits conveniently between your clear aligners. They are strong chewies, making them a better option for permitting gentle chewing routines. They also help you emit fresh and minty breath and withstand dry mouth. Movement is a must-have in your clear aligner kit.

3. Always Carry Along a Smile Saver Spray

Your Invisalign accessory kit should also contain a smile-saver spray. You can consider it an excellent solution for ensuring fast cleaning of your aligner tray. It is safe to use this cleansing agent because you need to maintain a bacterial-free aligner while treating your smiles.

Smile Saver Spray contains an alcohol-free, sugar-free, and peroxide-free formula, which makes it a perfect cleaning solution for your clear aligners. You can use them instead of rinsing them with water or spitting a sour aftertaste.

The spray has active actions as it rapidly removes oral bacteria in the space of 60 seconds, thereby helping you maintain odor-free and neatly cleaned Invisalign trays. This item should be with you throughout your smile journey.

4. OrthoKey Clear Aligner Removal Tool

While it might seem easy for you to remove your aligners, you should know that you might also warp them and render them useless for your effective treatment if you are not removing them properly.

Also, using your fingers to remove aligners from the chewing areas of your mouth is not a safe practice. You can cause damage to your health by either introducing bacteria into your teeth or injuring your gum or cheeks with stray fingernails.

However, this is why you need orthoKey. It is a handy piece of equipment that lets you remove your clear aligners easily. Orthokey is designed for comfort, which makes it an effective tool to add to your Invisalign kit. You can fit it inside your tray case and use it to remove your aligners without worrying about causing damage.

5. Floss Picks Are a Must Have

Floss Picks

Floss picks make your teeth straightening journey more comfortable and easy. You are already familiar with the idea of regular teeth flossing. But, your daily oral hygiene practice must increase when receiving Invisalign treatment.

Flossing helps remove trapped food bits between the teeth, which, when left behind, can cause plaque buildup and form tartars. Before wearing your aligner tray back, you must pick out particles between your teeth. It might feel uncomfortable to carry string flosses around, but you can try handier floss picks.

Conclusion

Caring for your clear braces is essential when receiving Invisalign treatment, as it helps you have a better experience and faster results. Accessories like floss picks, aligner retrieval tools, Invisalign chewies, and other necessary kits can help you on the go and are a preventive measure for oral problems like tooth decay during orthodontic treatment.

Spring Digitizer Technology in Dentistry

The wide range of digital appliances available to implant dentists, cosmetic dentists, general dentists, and orthodontists has significantly extended. This improvement technology provides patients with more conventional solutions that beat the traditional options when solving dental problems.

Some dentistry technologies available as digitizers include radiography, computerized, and electronic digitizers. Surgical guides depend on digital technology, such as impressions and implant placements.

Nowadays, many dental experts see that they utilize all proven digital techniques while practicing dentistry to help them offer more modernized dental treatment to patients. One thing about digital technology is that performances are more delicate, effective, efficient, and convenient. You can learn many more things about this rise in dental technology as you read further.

What Is Digital Dentistry?

What Is Digital Dentistry

Digital dentistry talks about many areas of dental technology as it involves digital-based devices like software solutions and hardware components. Digital technology allows a dental expert to offer treatment to patients using computer-aided apparatus.

For instance, the current level of technology in dentistry, including digital scanning, permits dental professionals in diagnostic performances, taking impressions, and planning treatment while excluding mechanical devices.

Also, the digital approach to dentistry for diagnostic laboratories, including design software and impression scanners, is relevant for speed when molding dental products or processing them. Digital dentistry helps in reducing manual work.

Digital technology for dental purposes is widely and readily available for laboratory and clinical use, and they have a vast range of functions and purposes. Scanning, milling or 3D printing, Imaging, and digital design are all self-developed technologies. But they work together for design, treatment planning, and treatment delivery.

What Does CAD/CAM Do in Digital Dentistry?

What Does CAD/CAM Do in Digital Dentistry

CAD or Computer-Aided Designs and CAM or computer-Aided Manufacturing technologies are software solutions professionals use in dentistry. However, engineers also use these software programs in the automotive field.

CAM and CAD initially and technically focus on the manufacturing and design stages of technology; in the dental field, the process deals with everything concerning dental technology, from intraoral scanning to setting up a computerized design, printing or milling, and carrying out dental work in the mouth.

It takes little time for your dentist to work using CAM or CAD. Therefore, the process can be as quick as 30 to 40 minutes. With this, you can easily have a successful treatment through a single visit.

According to a survey, it is pointed out that CAD or CAM software solutions like dental design and oral scanning can improve treatment accuracy, speed, and effectiveness. They are also affordable and reduce patients’ stress.

Are There Digital Orthodontic Treatments?

Treating malocclusion is now easier with the new level of technology as orthodontic specialists can now handle misaligned bites, jaw problems, and mal-positioned teeth through digitized orthodontic care.

Digital treatment is possible without the standard panoramic X-ray and traditional methods of teeth realignment that might not still produce accurate results. However, digital orthodontics involves using impressions, a process done by using digital dental scanners.

When receiving treatments through digital orthodontics, your dentist uses a 3D digital visualization to design an accurate and detailed mold of your teeth from all angles. With digital technology, a professional can select the best positions for clear aligners, retainers, braces, or other orthodontic appliances.

What Benefits Does Digital Technology Offer in Dentistry?

1. Digital Dentistry Is Cost-Effective

Digital technology in dentistry can help a dentist to save more on getting impression appliances and conveying the materials needed for treatment by using digital means instead. Similarly, patients will not pay for materials and time they never used. Digital dentistry includes more planning, proper treatment, and improved software solutions that support excellent treatment design and precision.

2. Digital Dentistry Saves Time

Digital dentistry permits a dentist to perform a faster treatment, allowing a patient to spend less time during treatment. This means that a patient can complete treatment during a single session.

3. Patients Are More Engaged During Treatment

With digital dental technology, professionals can show their patients the steps to their treatment results up to the final stage. Therefore, when using a dental design procedure, the dentist can engage a patient in dialogue to know their expectations. With this, the dentist can adjust to match the patient’s treatment desire, especially if it concerns the treatment period and aesthetics.

4. Space-Saving

Most patients need to learn that the dentist can help them preserve their physical impressions in the dental clinic. Some countries include space saving in their regulations. Through digital impression technology, dental clinics can use a single computer to store different kinds of teeth models and back them up in the cloud. This is better than having a physical store full of orthodontic appliances.

5. Digital Dental Technology Reduces Gag-Reflex

Dentists using the old-fashioned dental treatment methods often have patients reporting cases like teeth hypersensitivity or gag reflex. However, when a dentist uses digital impressions, the discomfort will not occur.

6. Entertainment

With digital pediatric dentistry, kids can have a more relaxing and less stressful dental procedure. Dental technology of 3D images can appear to children on the monitor like video games. This might feel entertaining even though they know they are fixing their oral problem.

7. Openness

With digital technology, a dentist can save information in a Standard Triangulation Language or STL format and adjust the information later by opening the 3D imaging system. Also, this improvement enables patients to independently bring their diagnostic or treatment results to a desired dental clinic.

Conclusion

Digitalization technology in dentistry started over four decades ago. But it was limited to adoption until the recent rise in adaptive technology. With this new change, dental experts are investing more in technological digital equipment, and dentistry will expand digitally in the few years ahead.

While digital technology in dentistry helps a dentist to improve speed, accuracy, and efficiency in treatment, it also advances a patient’s confidence, convenience, and interaction.

Role of Space Maintainers in Oral Health Preservation

Space Maintainers are crucial for oral health. They are objects placed in the mouth to maintain and preserve space between teeth. Space Maintainers are necessary when there is a loss in premature molars because of disease or trauma.

The role of a space maintainer is to allow the teeth to grow in the right place and align appropriately with another permanent tooth. When babies lose their teeth early, they usually have no guidance. The eruption process is natural and requires a guide to align nearby straight teeth.

Failure to aid its eruption will lead to a bad tooth position, and in most cases, it will grow in the wrong place in the gum. When there’s space between the teeth, other teeth can move to the open space, preventing permanent teeth eruption or proper alignment.

Space Maintainers must be used correctly; proper usage prevents the teeth from moving and causes loss of space for teeth.

Inclusively the permanent adult teeth like bicuspids and canines. Moreso, if the teeth are not firm, it begins to drift forward into another space, thereby causing a blockage and stopping the bicuspid teeth from erupting.

The process is vice versa; if not firm, the early bicuspid can also move inward and prevent the canines from erupting in the correct position and firmly.

Different types of space Maintainers can be used to preserve an individual’s oral health. Some of these Maintainers are long term while some are short-term usage.

In society, most deciduous teeth are ignored because of their temporal or short-term existence. Nevertheless, they are also important because they aid the growth and eruption of permanent teeth.

Some leading causes of teeth falling out and causing space in between are prolonged feeding with the bottle for babies. Also, the removal of grossly decayed primary teeth.

The types of space Maintainers depend mainly on the cause and extent of space in the teeth. The two types of space Maintainers are Removable and Fixed space Maintainers.

Your dentist will check and prescribe suitable space Maintainers when and if necessary.

Below are some of the role of space Maintainers in oral health:

Role of Space Maintainers in Oral Health

A Space Maintainer Helps to Shape the Teeth

The role of a space maintainer cannot be limited; it aids in aligning the erupting teeth. The space maintainer maintains the teeth’ arch length, width, and circumference.

It keeps it in regular shape, preventing unaligned and irregular growth and physique.

Often it is used in the mandibular and maxillary arch to aid the arch length after tooth removal. This is also to prevent future orthodontic treatments and complications.

A Space Maintainer Helps to Avoid Supra Eruption of the Opposing Tooth

Without a space maintainer, it is likely for a tooth to grow out of place in any available space. This can be prevented by the presence of a space maintainer, which protects the space created by the lost tooth until there’s an eruption.

When there’s a space loss, malocclusion and overcrowding can happen. In cases like the maxillary arch, a different method can be used in molar distalization.

Regaining space in the upper arch can be more challenging than in the lower arch; in such situations, the lip bumper can be used to avoid overcrowding and maintain space.

Improvement of Speech Abilities

Improvement of Speech Abilities

If a child loses the anterior teeth, speech production may be affected. The formation and production of sounds will be unnatural.

The space Maintainers aid in improving speech while beautifying the treatment process done by losing a tooth.

How and When to Wear a Space Maintainer

How and When to Wear a Space Maintainer

The best time to wear a space maintainer is when it is required. Most times, it is after a tooth loss or extraction.

Your orthodontic specialist will advise you when a space maintainer is needed. Ideally, it should be fixed as soon as possible to avoid complications.

How a space maintainer is worn depends on the type of space maintainer and its function.

Usually, patience is required before the child gets used to wearing a removable space maintainer. Since it is a foreign orthodontic appliance introduced to the child’s mouth, the guardian should exercise patience until the child gets comfortable wearing and using the teeth aligner.

Notably, the child should be encouraged to practice proper oral hygiene. Regular brushing, cleaning, and flossing should be practiced to prevent future infections or damage to the space maintainer.

When it is a fixed space maintainer, the user should avoid certain foods that can stick to the teeth and in between the space Maintainers.

Furthermore, it is advisable not to stick fingers in between or tug the appliance using your teeth or tongue as this may cause the appliance to weaken and lose.

Continuous monitoring of the appliance is required, and do not hesitate to let your dentist know if there is any change or loosening.

If a space maintainer is not used correctly and there is a loss of teeth, the child will likely experience a drifting of teeth and a midline shifting of teeth. Sometimes they experience tipping in the tooth.

The crowding and alterations of arch-length teeth can reduce a child’s self-esteem and disrupt the child’s emotional and physical health.

Moreso, failure to use a space maintainer will lead to orthodontic processes, which can be stressful and painful, like teeth extraction, and it can also lead to future complications.

Conclusion

The loss of teeth almost cannot be avoided. It is the responsibility of guardians and parents to prevent future complications and misalignment of teeth, which can disrupt a child’s emotional and physical well-being.

Regularly visiting an orthodontic specialist and maintaining oral hygiene are very important. Taking care of a child’s oral health is as important as caring for the child’s general health.