Preventive and Interceptive Orthodontics
Early Intervention: The Key to a Healthy Smile
As it is rightly said in medicine that “Prevention is better than cure “, this also holds true for dental health. Preventive orthodontics is essentially a proactive approach which involves comprehensive monitoring of your child’s developing teeth and jaws at regular intervals. It focuses on
- Early anticipation of potential dental issues that may interfere with the healthy development of your child’s teeth and jaws.
- Taking appropriate preventive measures before the potential issues manifest into a future dental problem.
Common Preventive Orthodontic Procedures
Parental Education
The primary care-givers for any child are the parents. Hence, it is very important for the parents to understand the importance of
- Optimum development of teeth and jaws
- Importance of the milk teeth
- Timely shedding or falling off of the milk teeth
- Building good dental habits right from the start for their kid
- Preventing the development of dental caries in milk and permanent teeth
- Create awareness about the importance of regular dental check-ups.
These synchronized efforts by the parents and us ensures healthy development of your child’s teeth and jaws. It reduces the future need of extensive and invasive orthodontic treatment.
Space Maintainers
- The permanent teeth develop below the primary teeth and erupt and occupy the place previously occupied by the milk or primary teeth. So when the underlying permanent tooth is ready to erupt in the mouth, the primary tooth starts shaking or moving and eventually falls off to create space in the mouth for the permanent teeth to erupt in its correct position in the mouth.
- Early loss of milk teeth, in the upper or lower jaw, due to decay causes the adjacent teeth to drift and reduces the spaces available for the underlying permanent teeth to erupt in the mouth. This loss of space may result in the permanent teeth to erupt in the mouth in a crooked and mal-aligned position due to lack of space.
- To prevent this from occurring, we use appliances called as space maintainers.
- Space maintainers are fixed appliances which help to maintain the space created by the early loss of milk teeth till the permanent teeth erupts in that space.
- Commonly used space maintainers are Nance button for the upper jaw and Lingual arch for the lower jaw.
Harmful Oral Habits
Harmful oral habits refers to certain actions that, involve the teeth and other oral and peri-oral structures like the tongue, lips, etc which are repeated often by the child to have long term deleterious effects on the proper growth of the jaws and positions of the developing teeth. Some of these harmful habits are
- Thumb or Finger sucking: This habit involves placing the thumb or finger into the mouth. This habit is considered normal upto the age of 3 years. Continuation of this habit beyond 3 years can adversely affect the growth of the upper jaw and teeth leading to a constricted upper jaw and forwardly placed upper front teeth.
- Tongue thrusting and abnormal swallowing: This habit involves the forward placement of the tongue tip between the teeth and the lower lip during swallowing and while pronouncing certain words with /s/, /n/, /t/ sounds. This habit also leads to constricted upper jaw, forwardly placed upper front teeth. It also causes anterior and sometimes posterior open bite, a condition where the upper and lower teeth do not meet each other and adversely affect the basic function of chewing.
- Mouth breathing habit: This habit involves habitual breathing through the mouth in addition to breathing through the nose. Kids with this habit tend to sleep with their mouth open at night. This open mouth position has harmful effects on the upper and lower jaws causing narrow upper jaw, long and narrow face and deficient growth of the lower jaw.
- Other potentially harmful oral habits include lip biting, nail biting and teeth grinding.
Early diagnosis of these habits, proper counselling of the parents coupled with motivating the child to break the habit can prevent these damaging influences on the developing jaws and teeth.
Interceptive Orthodontics: Timely Intervention for a Healthy Smile
Interceptive Orthodontics
Interceptive orthodontics refers to measures taken for early intervention to intercept and eliminate any existing or developing skeletal, dental and muscular imbalances that may interfere with the optimal development of your child’s teeth and jaws. These measures are typically undertaken for children between the ages of 7 to 10 years, during their mixed dentition phase, when they have both milk teeth and permanent teeth. This phase of treatment is also called as Phase 1 treatment. The aim is
- Timely intervention when the potential irregularity is first seen
- To intercept the irregularity from progressing into a more severe problem
- Trying to minimize the need for complex and extensive treatments in the future.
Serial Extraction
- This procedure is indicated in cases where there is visible lack of space in the jaws for all the permanent teeth to erupt in their correct position.
- This can lead to severe crowding of the permanent teeth when they erupt and in extreme situations can lead to complete failure of eruption called as impaction of permanent teeth.
- To avoid these future complications, serial extraction procedure is carried out which involves planned extraction of specific milk teeth and permanent teeth in a proper sequence so as to create space in the jaws and to guide the permanent teeth to erupt in their position.
Developing anterior crossbite
- Anterior crossbite is a condition where a single or two upper front permanent teeth are behind the lower front permanent teeth when your child bites on his back teeth.
- This condition prevents the normal forward growth of the upper jaw, affects the sideways movement of the jaws to the left and right and adversely affects the health of the gums around the teeth that are in crossbite relation.
- The correct time for diagnosing this problem is when the permanent front teeth erupt at the age of 7-8 years. If this condition is seen in milk teeth, then it should be promptly treated at that age. Early diagnosis and intervention is extremely important in this condition to not let it progress further.
- It can be treated easily with simple removable or fixed orthodontic appliances if correct diagnosis and treatment is carried out early.
Habit breaking appliances
- Harmful oral habits like thumb sucking, tongue thrusting, mouth breathing, lip biting, etc when continued beyond 3-4 years of age can adversely affect the developing teeth and jaws.
- Habit breaking appliances are used to intercept and break the habit.
- The child is motivated to break the habit and the appliance is given to act as a reminder for the child to stop the habit when they try to indulge in the habit.
- For mouth breathing habit, it is very important to identify the cause for the habit. If nasal obstruction or congestion is the reason for the mouth breathing, then it is very important to address the cause first before giving any habit breaking appliance for mouth breathing.
Space regaining
- Early loss of milk teeth in the upper and lower jaw due to decay, can cause the adjacent teeth to drift in that space and cause loss of space for the erupting permanent teeth.
- If space maintainers have not been used at the right time to prevent the loss of space, then the erupting permanent teeth can be crooked or mal-aligned.
- Space regaining appliances are used in such situations where the erupting permanent teeth have lack of space due to drifting of adjacent teeth.
- These appliances push the teeth that have drifted to their correct position to open up space for the erupting permanent teeth.
- These appliances are effective if used at an early age before the eruption of the second permanent molar in the mouth.
Partial braces treatment
- Some kids have permanent upper front teeth which are extremely forwardly placed in their mouth.
- These teeth are exceedingly prone to trauma if the kid has a fall and hurts his face and teeth.
- To prevent this, braces are fixed on the upper front 2 or 4 teeth and the upper molars for a limited period of time to correct the forward position of the front teeth and protect them for trauma.
- This appliance is called as a 2×4 appliance.
Recommended age for your child’s first visit to an Orthodontist
Worldwide, all Orthodontists recommend that as a general rule of thumb children should first see an Orthodontist when they are around 7 years old. At this age we will:
- Evaluate Jaw development
- Baby teeth and permanent teeth development
- Help predict future problems in teeth and jaw growth
- Suggest any preventive treatment, if needed
The Role of Parents in Preventive and Interceptive Orthodontics
Parents play a crucial role in the success of these treatments by
- Ensuring regular dental visits and monitoring their child’s oral habits.
- Encouraging good oral hygiene practices and a healthy diet.
- Ensuring that your child follows the instructions given by us and wears the prescribed appliances as directed.
Benefits of Preventive and Interceptive Orthodontics
Guidance of Jaw Growth
Early diagnosis and treatment can address the discrepancies in jaw growth, ensuring that the upper and lower jaws grow in harmony. This treatment helps to achieve a more healthier and functional bite and reduces the severity of future issues.
Correction of Harmful Oral Habits
Thumb sucking, tongue thrusting, and mouth breathing can negatively impact dental development. Early intervention with habit breaking appliances can help correct these habits.
Improve Tooth Alignment
By guiding the eruption of permanent teeth, preventive and interceptive treatment can improve overall tooth alignment and prevent severe crowding.
Reduces Risk of Trauma
Correcting protruding teeth early on can reduce the risk of dental trauma.
Simplifies Future Treatments
Early evaluation allows for the timely detection and treatment of existing problems and helps to simplify and shorten the duration of future orthodontic treatments if needed.
Schedule a Consultation
Preventive and Interceptive orthodontics is a proactive approach and an essential component of maintaining long-term dental health. By addressing issues early, we can help ensure a beautiful, healthy smile for your child that lasts a lifetime. If you have any concerns about your child’s dental development, don’t hesitate to schedule an evaluation with our expert Orthodontist Dr. Vidhi Shah.