Metal Mouth Message Board

I've had braces on for about a year and a half. At my last ortho appointment, he told me that I was very near to completion but I don't see it that way.

I am happy with the left side of my smile, everything is proportioned and straight. However the right side of my smile looks a bit off.

The lateral tooth on my right side is shorter than the opposite. This is probably the only thing that I see that needs to be done, to fix the unbalanced look.

I wear rubber bands which has helped a lot. At my last ortho appointment, they put two new hooks on my lateral teeth and they told me to do "boxes" on each side of my mouth and a "box" in the front. It's supposed to align my bite and not have any gaps in between when I bite down, but it's not doing anything to bring down that one short tooth. The ortho told me he was going to shave down my long lateral (which is like the perfect length) to match the other one, which is idiotic in my opinion.

My next appointment is in October and I think it's a waste of time to wait that long and tell them my concerns, and then have to wait another 2-3 months. Should I call them up and ask for an appointment? How would they bring down my tooth and in your opinion, do my teeth look ready to have braces taken off?

So I don't know how to post pictures on here, oh well..

Hello!

You have to be a full member before you can post picture (I believe you have to post at least 7 times before that happens).

I would absolutely call your ortho before your appt and ask if you can schedule one just to discuss your treatment.

Really hard to see what you are talking about without pictures.

I would *think* that pulling down laterals should be something easily accomplished. However, I kind of had the same problem you did with the laterals not being even. I spent 3 and a half years in braces and the laterals did even out a bit but never became perfectly symmetrical. I think there are more factors at work than you can really see. I think think the upper incisors seem to be difficult to make any fine adjustments to as they have a tendency to bounce back to their original position just because of the thinner alveolar bone wall and the length of the roots.

I've got some pictures on my sig if you want to see how my laterals look now. They aren't perfect but they are good enough I guess.

I was in trapezoid boxes for a while.

I found more tooth movement with wearing my elastics in a 'V'. You hook to one tooth, double up the middle of the elastic and hook to your opposite tooth, and bring it back to the tooth next to the first. In my case, I was trying to erupt my lowers so I was literally in a regular V shape. At one point, I had three V's next to each other.

For my more 'stubborn' teeth that didn't want to erupt, I actually had my wire undertied. Basically, they put the archwire under my bracket, secured behind the hook. This gave an additional force to encourage the tooth up. My teeth moved pretty quickly with this technique. Especially since I was in a heavier archwire.

I know there are other techniques out there, but those were the ones I've had throughout my treatment