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Planning and Preparing for Dental Procedures: Your Questions Answered


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Planning and Preparing for Dental Procedures: Your Questions Answered

Making decisions about your smile can be confusing. Should you have a tooth pulled or get a root canal? Should you get adult braces or stick with a retainer? Should you use at-home whitening remedies or have your teeth professionally whitened? If questions like these are keeping you up at night, you've come to the right place. I used to stress out over routine dental procedures, and as a result, I did loads of research on everything dental-related. To help others, I'm using this blog as a place to collect, review and share what I've learned through the years. I hope you can use the information here to help you plan and prepare for your next dental appointment.

4 Ways to Make Your Teeth Straightening Braces More Effective

Orthodontic treatment can greatly improve the appearance of misaligned teeth, but using traditional braces means you have to wait years before results are achieved. Thanks to technological advancements, today you have a few improvements on traditional braces, and these work faster and are hence less inconveniencing. This article discusses some of these options if you're considering tooth alignment.

1. AcceleDent

AcceleDent is a mouthpiece/device that is fitted around clear aligners or fixed traditional braces. It has an activator that is switched on daily for 20 minutes. The treatment accelerates movement by using gentle pulsing technology to improve the comfort of braces and speed up tooth alignment. This treatment is safe, but it should be used every day for best results. Usually, your orthodontist will order the AcceleDent mouthpiece for you and adjust according to your bite for additional comfort during use. In addition, the device can be paired with the AcceleDent app to get output details on your progress. Both you and your orthodontist can access this data.

2. Propel Alveocentesis

Propel® is a trademark system that uses a process called Alveocentesis to stimulate synthesis of bone in the upper and lower jaws (alveolar bone), causing teeth to shift into alignment positions much faster. This is especially helpful for patients that go for tooth straightening in adulthood, when there's less natural bone development, slower tissue healing and hence slower response to treatment with braces alone. Alveocentesis has the advantage of being able to target a specific tooth whenever needed.

3. Propel Chairside Excellerator

As the name suggests, this is a simple chairside treatment applied by orthodontists to speed up tooth misalignment issues such as gaps in teeth, irregular spacing, cross-bites, overbites etc. The dentist uses Propel drivers to perform micro-osteoperforation (MOP) to stimulate your natural inflammatory response to improve the speed of bone remodelling and tooth movement.

Usually, one or two MOP procedures will be carried out, with each procedure including multiple perforations according to your treatment plan and specific alignment issues. This treatment is done within minutes during your dental appointment, and you'll be able to return to normal activity with minimal or no discomfort, especially in later sessions. In addition, the Excellerator can be used with fixed braces to unlock problematic movements.

4. Surgery

Finally, orthodontic procedures can be accelerated by orthognathic surgery, where tissue is removed between teeth to provide space for movement. While invasive, surgery is recommended to patients whose tooth misalignment is really the result of misaligned jaws. This surgery can also correct facial deformities as a result of misaligned jaws, and patients will see improvement in breathing, chewing and other previously difficult tasks.

For more information, contact companies like Melrose Dental.