Metal Mouth Message Board

Hi all,

I have had my braces on for around a year and a half. I had 4 extractions as well as TPA and lingual bar. From the progress pictures I see that my braces are slowly giving me an overbite... My upper teeth now cover my lower teeth to the point I see only half of my lower teeth. Also, my upper teeth have a lot of gaps in between various teeth. On the other hand my lower teeth have no gaps in inbetween but all but my lower teeth have seem to have been pushed backwards, while my upper teeth have not been shifted in this way. Not only have my upper teeth not retracted but in addition my incisors are flared, which adds to overbite/overjet look. I started with no overbite prior to getting the braces and now I have one, which is making me depressed and sick. My lower gaps have not closed yet which leads me to believe that overbite will increase. In addition, my ortho promised to widen my upper arch as that was the reason why I got my braces (buccal corridors) and that has not changed at all. I don't know what to do at this point. Whenever I point this to my ortho she starts assuring my all is okay and she will retract the upper teeth. However, I don´t think she will have enough space to retract uppers enough (she extracted the second premolars for some reason and the molars have moved forward). I am so annoyed that I have to research this stuff and draw attention to these issues to my ortho. I am paying a lot of money and I am starting to lose so much trust in my ortho. I do have the tendency to overanalyse and panic but the pictures I took do not lie. Does anyone have any piece of advice? I am starting to think I never should have put these damn things on...

Trust is a big deal. Perhaps a friendly and honest conversation with your ortho would be productive in terms of (re)establishing trust?

Hopefully it sorts out well for you!

Do you have pictures to share? I'm finding it abit hard to visualize based on your description. Also, why did your ortho recommend extractions if you did not have an overbite to begin with? Did you have alot of crowding?

Personally, there was a stage in my treatment where I also could not see how this would end well. I seemed to have more gaps than teeth. My ortho retracted my lower teeth first before retracting the uppers. He told me that this was important because the lowers would control how the uppers come in, and retracting both jaws simultaneously could result in that caved in look. Now that all my extraction spaces have closed, my bite looks normal. My ortho also widened my upper arch around the time when all my extraction spaces have closed.

Since your extraction spaces have yet to close on your uppers, my guess is there's still room for your teeth to retract. As for your lowers, perhaps the molars will come forward to close the gaps instead of the front teeth coming back? Because that was what happened in my case. I agree with speck, trust is very important. Perhaps make an appointment with your ortho just to discuss your concerns and realign treatment goals might be helpful. Or you could also perhaps seek a 2nd opinion before talking to your ortho.