Metal Mouth Message Board

1) When I started treatment 6 months ago to open up a closed/deep bite, my orthodontist only bracketed from my first molars, forward. That is, all 4 second molars were not bracketed. My wisdom teeth/third molars were extracted decades ago.

While the last 6 months of treatment have proved to be beneficial, my orthodontist now wants to bracket [and wire] my 4 second molars, saying that it's necessary to do so so that the deep bite can be opened up more. Is this common practice? Has anyone else had a similar situation? I've been told that the additional anchoring will move my back teeth [on the lower jaw] up ~1mm, but that it'll end up moving my lower front teeth down ~2.5mm.

2) That brings me to my next question: when opening up a deep bite, is the correct final position of teeth on the lower jaw configured so that the tops of all the teeth form a level plane? Or, are the tops of the lower jaw's front teeth supposed to be higher than the tops of the lower jaw's back teeth? Does anyone know?

Craig (age 36, Washington, DC, USA)

Hi there

I had my braces on a few months before my back molars were included in the process. Dont know why they did this in my case, never thought to ask, to be honest, so yes it does happen to other people not just you

In response to your 2nd question i think in a perfect bite the top teeth are meant to rest very very slightly in front of the bottom front teeth, whereas the side teeth are meant to meet head on so to speak, i could be wrong on this tho.

Hope that helps

Louise

I think the same thing is going to have to be done to my teeth....its almost like my braced teeth are starting to form a narrow arch within my back unbraced molars. It doesn't look right and I was wondering what had to happen to get my teeth to line up with those back molars. Just how uncomfortable is it once you brace that back molar? Is there a lot of rubbing against the inside of the mouth?

Hi there

It is quite uncomfortable when they brace the back molar im afraid from my experiance. This is due as you suggest to the fact that the bracket and the end of the arch wire is so near to the back of your mouth. I still need to put wax on the very back molar every day for this reason, but only on one side and only at the top. The top ones seem to be worse in my opinion, not sure why this is, tho i have a overbite and my teeth are more closely packed on the top so guess this is the reason.

Its not so bad though, you soon get used to it and since having my rear molars banded my teeth seem to be moving much faster, which has to be good.

Hope that helps.

My lower second molars were also bracketed later in my treatment. Soon after that, I recieved a reverse curve archwire for several months. This type of archwire opens up the bite by extruding the posterior teeth and intruding the anterior teeth thus reducing the curve of Spee. In an ideal occlusion, the mandibular curve of Spee is concave whereas the maxillary curve is convex.

I didn't have my rearmost molars on the lowers bracketed until about my 3rd adjustment. But it was no biggie, they've gradually moved into place along with all my other bottom teeth.

Thanks to everyone who replied - I'll have my wax ready... 31 March is when the remaining teeth will get banded. I'll ask my ortho about the Spee curvature for mandibular teeth, then. BTW - that's a fantastic piece of info: I really needed to know what the final configuation is supposed to look like, and now I can help monitor things a bit better - especially since my ortho is not very communicative. They're all friendly, but, man, they don't seem to want to be bothered explaining why they do what they do.

Again, Thanks everyone.

Craig

I was suppose to get some special wire last time, but because my archwire had broken I just got a normal .

My front incissors are very worn because of the deepbite. they are in same level and little bit higher than the rest. If i would not have started to fix my deepbite they would have been worning even more.