Friday, June 19, 2009

Power chain and new archwires

With renewed teeth and some happiness (I never feel happy to go to the dentist!) I went with my future wife to the clinic of Dr. Ibarra for the big appointment. In my previous visit a few days ago I had my teeth cleaned and a visual inspection of the progress.

By now the two brackets that were on my two crowns (back molars of lower jaw) had fallen over the past months. I live abroad so I could not visit him to have that taken care of.

The 2 fallen brackets posed no problem for the treatment because my lower jaw molars and teeth were almost totally aligned and with sufficient space. He chose to simply replace my lower archwire to a thicker wire (more force now) and cut the archwire so that the two crowns remained without brackets. Brackets don’t bond well with (porcelain) crowns even with more powerful glue as he had used.

The replacement of my lower archwire was very painful, pfew! stressful too! in the past months the two lower front teeth had rotated slightly, in fact for a few months I had not been able to pass floss between them due to their tightness. It was impossible to completely place the wire through the bracket so in the end to save my some pain he had to tie them. Looks as if it is through but well, saved me more discomfort.

My upper archwire was also replaced with a thicker one. This one is the last (and thickest) to be placed there while my lower jaw will still require a thicker one on the next follow up (December).

In order to close down the gap between the upper front teeth and align them Dr. Ibarra put on a “power chain” on my upper jaw. The “power chain” (see video below) is an elastic chain with loops that are put around each bracket to close space/gaps, they apply extra force. That first day was a bit uncomfortable but bearable and I noticed results that same day (the gap was closed!).

My power chain is transparent to make it discrete so for the purpose of this blog I am showing somebody else’s chains (in pink, see (a)). There is also a video of the application of a power chain (again another person).

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