Hi-
I was looking at my braces tonight and i noticed that the little elastic ligature that holds the wire in place is missing from one of my teeth. My next ortho appt isnt until November 9th. Is this something that can wait until then or should I go and see my ortho?
I have lingual braces (the ones behind the teeth) but I thought this was a more general question.
Thanks!
Lost Elastic Ligature
Moderator: bbsadmin
Happened to me.. last Friday.. the ligature was half detached from the bracket, but I still haven't fixed the problem yet. My next appointment is this Wednesday, I haven't even called my ortho to tell her what happened, though I feel a bit "guilty".. I tried to put the elastic back, but couldn't, so I just took it off completely, and I've been so busy at work that I simply couldn't find a couple of hours to go have this fixed. So it will be 5 days without one ligature, til Wednesday.. I will try not to wait that long if it happens again, which I hope will not be the case, and hope the treatment was not affected because of this little accident.
For what it's worth, I lost a lig a few weeks before my next appointment and thought it would be OK to just leave it. In those 3 weeks, without being anchored by the lig, that one tooth started to move back to its original position and I set my treatment back by 6 weeks (3 weeks to catch up to where it had been before the lig came off and another 3 weeks to move the tooth to where it should have gone with the lig attached).
The standard chorus here is always 'ask your ortho', but for this one, I think that's a good idea
The standard chorus here is always 'ask your ortho', but for this one, I think that's a good idea

Braced May 2005
Bimaxillary surgery Aug 2007
Debraced Jun 2008
Bimaxillary surgery Aug 2007
Debraced Jun 2008
I always called and prefaced my call by stating when my next scheduled apppointment was so that a judgment could be made as to whether I should wait or come in. On every occasion (and there were a few of them) they fitted me in within 24 hours and the problem was sorted. On some of these occasions, my ortho did a mini-adjustment so I got more than I bargained for.