But as an interesting exercise for us lets keep at it.
1. In your pic. are you biting down and its that side that is an open bite which is still to be fixed?
2. If the ortho says the flairing is required to support the tops, I'm thinking its to camouflage the overjet. The extractions would reduce the overjet and allow for the bottoms to be straight. Not clear to me why or where its flaired because there isn't room or extractions would be required because of over crowding when the reason given by the ortho is its to support the upper teeth. The arch is now nicely rounded, the bottom teeth had to move forward to is current flaired position from originally being tipped back. So I'm not seeing where they are now restricted in being pushed back again to a vertical position
I'd ask about the overjet aspect of the flairing and support of the top teeth. Is that the sole reason for the flairing and its not because there is no room for them to be vertical (which doesn't make sense).
3. Looks to me like the ortho has flaired them to create a 0 overjet. Again I would ask if that is the sole reason for the flairing. No overjet.
As mentioned 0-4mm (+/-) is acceptable. If the tops need to remain at that specific angle / flair to support the upper lip, reducing the flair of the bottoms would create some overjet (as below). Keep the top angle and have no overjet, which would stll require the bottoms to be flaired like right now, intrude the top and bottom so that complete protrusion is reduced.
It's all about the angles.
I'm most interested if it is indeed being done solely for the overjet (to support the upper teeth). There is a picture on the forum of a young guy with the exact same flairing of the bottoms for this purpose. It's not an unusual solution to camouflageing an overjet. The picture shows quite a flaired bottom row from the side, I can't find it right now, not sure if its in this forum or the brace story forum or from last year or the year before.
When is your next appointment? Of course take up everything with the ortho and find out what is what and what can be done, if it's still a month or so away, to clear your mind, maybe request consult appointment in the office where you can go over the diagrams and graphs etc. versus simple discussion in the chair?
