Word of Mouth

By: Dr Paul Humber
Created on 09th November 2009

Straight white teeth, without the drill or fixed braces, are now possible. Dr Paul Humber of Hopvine House Dental Surgery explores the modern options for achieving a great smile

For centuries, a great smile could often only be achieved by wielding a drill, or extracting teeth and fitting dentures. In more recent years, a major option has been fixed metal or ceramic braces (commonly known as 'train track' braces) but these tend to be uncomfortable, cumbersome to clean, and ultimately it is difficult to be taken seriously in a professional workplace if you are sporting the 'Ugly Betty' look.

A great deal of TV makeover programmes involves the sort of dentistry where healthy teeth may be cut down and porcelain crowns or veneers placed over the top, but with these techniques there is the long-term worry that the edge of the veneer or crown may become visible with time and further dentistry will be needed, perhaps involving more drilling if and when they are replaced. Veneers also have a limited lifetime.

Thankfully, one new modern orthodontic treatment in particular is helping to sweep away these dilemmas allowing adults and teenagers to achieve straighter, more glamorous smiles without brackets and wires or veneers. Virtually invisible, even close up, Invisalign was launched in the States in the late 1990s and, to date, over a million people worldwide have now been treated this way.

Whether your smile needs minor improvements or more extensive adjustments, Invisalign doesn't involve painful surgery or the embarrassment and inconvenience of traditional fixed braces. The first step is that we work in conjunction with Invisalign to 'design' a smile on a computer using Invisalign's exclusive and unique advanced 3-D computer-imaging technology or ClinCheck® software.

The ClinCheck software provides us with an idea of the likely time that it will take to straighten the teeth - which could be as little as four months but tends to be about nine to eighteen months - and it also mocks up how the teeth should look when treatment is complete. The next stage is that a series of clear plastic 'aligners' are created for you to wear over the teeth. The benefits of opting for Invisalign far outweigh those of other orthodontic treatments available. Aligners can be removed so that you can eat, drink, brush and floss as normal. They are virtually invisible and have proved far more comfortable than traditional treatment options as there are no metal brackets or wires to cause mouth irritation. They do not cover the roof of the mouth, so they should not affect your speech, and as a result you are free to get on with your life.

In the seven years that I have been helping patients by using Invisalign, I have been struck by the degree to which it has transformed lives. Patients have made comments such as, "This is the first time in my life that I have been able to smile in photographs" and "I can't believe how quickly this has worked".

A very telling development has been that our own staff have tended to choose Invisalign as their preferred option for themselves and their families. After all, when you have spent a lifetime looking after your teeth carefully and eating sensibly, it does seem a shame to start drilling away good teeth and glueing on porcelain veneers, when these modern techniques are an option instead.

As one patient said to me recently, "Now that Invisalign has been invented, I am amazed that anyone does anything else."
CS&AM