Metal Mouth Message Board

I just got braces on a month ago and am concerned that my ortho just wants to use interproximal reduction (slenderizing,stripping,polishing tooth enamel to reduce size of teeth) on my front teeth instead of extracting teeth to fix my overbite. I went to 3 different orthos before sticking w/ this one.They all wanted to extract teeth but the ortho I chose said he prefers not to take out any teeth and instead just slenderize them. Im concerned because I have a deep overbite(6"-8 1/2" to be exact) and im worried that if just by polishing them my teeth are gonna completly move back as they would if I had extractions done.He says because of my small frame (Im 5'1, 88 lbs) it would look more attractive to slenderize my 2 front teeth because they are a bit large for me.


So wat do u guys think?

My ortho wants to polish instead of extraction. If you're 20+ it's more likely the ortho doesn't want to extract.
I have some overbite and crowding and thought an extraction would be necessary.
I may still extract later on if it doesn't work.

My gut feeling is that anything that can avoid extractions is a good thing, except of course where there is an urgent need (terrible decay, impacted wisdoms, etc).

Tooth extraction is irreversible. If slenderisation doesn't work, then you always extraction as a future option.

The other issue is that usually, people need to have two teeth taken out for balance/symmetry. This is a lot of gap to fill, if you weren't that crowded.

Remember your teeth only have to be slightly at the wrong angle to look and feel really, really crowded. Try it with your fingers: make a flat, straight hand, fingers lined up straight together, then lean your fingers in over your palms to create right angles. Feel how the pressure between your fingers increases and fingers kind of start overlapping.

Then straighten your hands up again and flex your fingers back a little. See the huge difference? Braces move teeth through three dimensions, not just sideways.

I'm getting my 5 bottom front teeth shaved down. So far it's been going fine, but it's not far enough along to straighten out all of my teeth.

My denitst wanted to refrain from any heavy/long work bec. of certain health issues I have, and thus didn't want to do extractions.

I don't have much crowding at all...so yesterday I got the polishing done between 3 of my teeth. 0.5mm I believe. now its being pulled back to close the space, and bring the out of place tooth back into place.

I much rather the polishing. No extractions. No huge space to full up.

I'm interested to read this thread. I haven't had extractions, my ortho says he is pretty confident he can get my teeth sorted without extractions but that he may rethink a bit further down the line. He hasn't mentioned about slenderising any teeth though, think i'll ask him at my next (first!) adjustment.

I have been worrying a bit lately that perhaps the ortho has made a bit of a mistake and that I should have had extractions in the first place - I haven't seen much movement in my teeth as yet, although there is a gap appearing between my two front uppers where the one next to the right-hand one is forcing its way out from behind.

Interesting. My two cents worth (as Kent Brockman would say):

My initial treatment plan was for no extractions (due to time constraints imposed by me). My ortho was hoping to fix my "large horizontal overlap of front teeth", "lower front teeth hidden behind uppers" and "obvious wearing of some teeth" with "minor reduction of enamel between some teeth".

Sounded pretty scary to me. Initially I was worried this would weaken my teeth and leave them susceptible to decay, etc (or more so than was usual). To be honest, I wasn't real happy with the idea of having any of my teeth filed. When the ortho put my braces on though, he decided there really wasn't enough room to fix the overjet with filing alone, so I ended up getting two teeth extracted. While I was a bit freaked out by the permanance and extremity of extraction and removing two perfectly healthy teeth, I was less freaked out than the idea of having my teeth filed. While I'm not happy I had to have two healthy teeth removed, I'm glad the teeth were extracted so I can achieve an effective solution to the problem I'm paying to have fixed. I got the impression filing would lessen the degree of the problem but not fix it altogether and was not really the ideal solution.

I'm interested to hear other people's reactions/experiences with filing v extraction, I didn't discover this website til recently...