Orthodontics
You may have seen celebrities or everyday people with gold-pated teeth and stylish braces. While some of these may be aesthetic, a majority of them are worn for medical reasons. So, how do you know that you need orthodontics?
Only an orthodontist or a dentist such as Dr. Normand Bach can determine whether you should get orthodontics. Dentists and orthodontists use a range of tools including your full medical history, your dental health history, special X-rays of your teeth, and models of your teeth made from plaster to make this determination. Getting orthodontics is part of a larger treatment plan.
Dr. Bach can recommend orthodontics if you have the following:
- Buck teeth or overbite, where the front upper teeth stick out over the lower teeth,
- Open bite, where there is a space left by the biting surfaces of the middle and/or front teeth when the back teeth are together in a bite,
- A bulldog appearance or Underbite, where the lower front tooth are too far forward in comparison to the upper teeth,
- Misplaced midline, where the centres of the upper front teeth and upper lower teeth do not line up,
- Crossbite, where the upper front teeth do not come slightly down beyond the lower teeth in a normal bite, crowding, where the dental ridge cannot accommodate the number of teeth, and
- Spacing, where there are gaps between teeth as a result of teeth that fail to fill up the mouth or missing teeth.
These conditions are corrected using either fixed or removable appliances. Fixed appliances are:
- Fixed appliances for maintaining space used, especially in babies, to maintain space in case milk teeth come off too early,
- Other fixed appliances that are special and used to control activities, especially in children, such as tongue thrusting and thumb sucking. These are used