Braces straighten out crooked teeth and help your jaws and chewing muscles grow into a good bite. Your smile and profile look better and your teeth stay healthier.
By wearing braces while you’re young, you may not have to wear them as long later, as a teenager. Orthodontics (also called Dentofacial Orthopedics) gives you a head start on your winning smile.
When it comes to the care of your teeth, receiving treatment from the appropriate professional is vital. That is why it's important to know the difference between an orthodontist and a dentist and when you should seek the services of each.
Prior to offering any treatment your Orthodontist will evaluate your case in great detail and come up with a suitable treatment plan.
Your teeth and jaws are like your fingerprint, as special as you are. So your orthodontist first looks at your profile, jaws, and teeth, and watches how you bite and swallow. Your orthodontist also asks questions about your teeth. If you have any questions about your braces or alternatives to braces form of treatment, this is a good time to ask.
X-rays show your head, face, jaw bones, and all of your teeth. These are used to measure your teeth and jaws and plan your treatment. Most of you will be asked to have two X- rays taken, the OPG (Orthopentomogram), which gives us all the information about your teeth, and Lateral Cephalogramwhich gives us the information about the jaws.
Impressions are taken by biting into materials that later harden. These show how your teeth and jaws fit together. These help us see and remember how your teeth looked before treatment started. Impressions are also taken at the end of treatment to compare and understand the changes we have brought about for you during treatment.
Nowadays, there is a trend to record digital impressions. This involves the use of an intraoral scanner which does not emit radiation, but is a photographic wand which captures high speed images of how your teeth look in your mouth on to a computer screen.
Photographs of your profile, face, smile and teeth are taken before and after treatment. You can look forward to seeing pictures of your new smile after braces.
All of the above data i.e. your Xrays, Photographs and models are scanned and transferred to a computer system which has a special software which allows me to evaluate what your specific problem is and where is it that the problem is concentrated e.g. in your upper jaw or lower jaw or in the teeth themselves.
The special software also allows me to do mock procedures to predict how your face will look if we do different treatment procedures and hence allows me to finally choose a treatment plan most suitable for your case keeping in mind your end treatment goals, time frame available for treatment and treatment preferences i.e. choice of appliances.
After looking closely at your teeth and jaws, and studying your evaluation report generated by the software system your orthodontist may say you have a malocclusion. That means your teeth and jaws don't meet correctly. Broadly there are three kinds of malocclusions, called Class I, Class II and Class III. You may have other orthodontic problems, too. Your orthodontist can use this page to show you what your orthodontic problem is.
Your jaws line up correctly, but your teeth are crooked, crowded, turned, or spaced too far apart.
Your upper jaw is too far in front, or your lower jaw is too far back. It’s also called an “overbite.”
Your lower jaw is too far in front, or your upper jaw is too far back, it’s also called an “underbite.”
When you bite down with your back teeth, your front teeth stay open.
When you bite down, your upper teeth cover your lower teeth.
When you bite down, some upper teeth close inside of your lower teeth.
Contemporary Orthodontics:
612, 6th Floor, A wing Panchsheel Plaza,
Opposite Ghanasingh Jewelers,
N.S. Patkar Marg, Gamdevi, Mumbai 400007