——"World Orthodontic Health Day" Oral Health Care Series Science Popularization (1)
Shi Chao, Department of Stomatology, Characteristic Medical Center (formerly 306 Hospital).
Edited by Liu Yan/Cui Yan, Medical Science Popularization Center
On April 30, 2017, at the Executive Committee of the World Federation of Orthodontics (WFO) held in San Diego, USA, May 15 was officially designated as "World Orthodontic Health Day" (WOHD). Today, it is the 8th World Orthodontic Health Day, and the medical staff of the Department of Stomatology of the Characteristic Medical Center have written a series of orthodontic science to help everyone improve their awareness of orthodontics and cavity health care, and wish every patient a bright smile and healthy teeth after the orthodontic treatment!
At present, the types of full-mouth appliances commonly used in clinical practice are mainly divided into two categories: fixed appliances and invisible appliances. In addition to the efficacy, comfort and aesthetics, more patients will also consider which appliance is easier to clean and less prone to caries during the orthodontic treatment. Next, let's analyze the performance of fixed appliances and invisible appliances in this regard.
First of all, let's talk about fixed appliances, which are traditional "steel braces".
As shown in the figure, there are many orthodontic parts in the oral cavity, it is difficult to clean, food residues and soft scale are easy to accumulate around the aligners, and the caries pathogenic bacteria in the oral cavity are easy to use these residues and soft scale to cause tooth decay, and the caries parts are mainly concentrated around the appliance and between the appliance and the gums, and at the same time, due to the inability to use dental floss, caries may occur in the adjacent parts of the teeth due to food impaction, which can be manifested as demineralization, coloring and even tooth defect of tooth enamel.
Fixed appliances have such a bug in oral cleaning, so will invisible appliances be better?
As you can see, the attachment of the clear aligner is smaller, and there is no wide range of appliances to make brushing difficult, and you can also floss, so brushing is easier. So, is it possible that you won't get tooth decay if you wear invisible braces? In fact, it is not the case, because the wrapping of invisible braces makes the saliva flushing and the friction of the lips, cheeks and tongue muscles can not act on the tooth surface, so it greatly reduces the self-cleaning of the teeth, if the patient brushes his teeth lazily at this time, does not clean the appliances, caries will also occur, and the range of caries is more extensive, and even wearing braces to drink drinks, then the result will be disastrous.
No matter what kind of braces, in the process of orthodontic treatment, patients need to brush their teeth carefully, according to different appliances can choose different brushing tools, fixed appliances in addition to toothbrushes, can also use interdental brushes and oral irrigators to help people brush their teeth more cleanly.
The last picture is the state of a patient's teeth after using fixed orthodontic treatment, so whether or not there will be no caries depends not on what kind of orthodontic treatment is used, but on how seriously we brush our teeth and how we brush our teeth.
I wish every orthodontic patient a bright smile and healthy teeth after their orthodontic treatment!
(Some of the pictures come from the Internet)