Tips to Improve Aligner Therapy Treatment

I used to give a presentation in my courses entitled, “Aligners: The good, the bad and the ugly”. I have quite honestly been less than enamored with this type of orthodontics. While I do not push it within my practice, I do offer it as an option. I continue to improve in my final results with aligner orthodontic cases. Knowledge is powerful, and I have been given additional knowledge that has helped my cases tremendously. A lot of this knowledge has been given to me from my friend and fellow AOS member, Cheryl Bologna, DDS in Dearborn, Michigan. If you do not know Cheryl, you will in the very near future. Her article on ”Invisalign® Gems” appears in this edition of the journal. She is a tremendous speaker, great dentist, mother and wife, operates a huge dental practice, and is a true “Aligner Queen”!

I have incorporated several of Cheryl’s pearls, along with a few of my own, into my patient’s aligner therapy to help improve the treatment and its outcome. First, when placing aligners, I instruct the company who fabricates the aligners not to perform any IPR initially. With traditional straight wire orthodontics, I always perform IPR at the end of treatment. Now, I simply instruct the company to expand and procline the teeth, then IPR as needed at end of treatment or in the refinement of the case. In other words, I “round-trip the crowns”.