Metal Mouth Message Board

My ortho has indicated that if I wanted to do so, I might be able to switch from my present lingual iBraces to Invisalign. Now, I may have no choice but to do so, as I may have to relocate to a city where no-one handles lingual braces.

Has anyone reading this message done so? If you have, then please tell me how you made out in the end. If the results are disasterous, I may just continue commuting a few thousand miles on the weekend to see my present orthodontist. It may prove to be just as cheap to do so, anyway.

I still have some distance to go on closing an open anterior bite on the right-hand side of my chompers (the left-hand side seems to be closed). It looks to be a couple of millimetres or so. Invisalign is not ideal for closing open anterior bites, is it?

Hi, sorry i cant help you on that, i dont have my braces yet but i am in the process of finding out about it all, i cant decide if i really want Lingual i have heard so much about them in a bad way.....
not being able to eat or bite down, and having a lisp it all scares me.
i have an appointment next tues with an ortho and i am hoping he will say i can have regular braces or linguals for some of the time and then switch to invisalign for the rest of the time.
how long have you had your linguals on before he said you can do the switch?? and how bad was your case to begin with..

If we do it, the switch is to come almost one year after I first had iBraces (lingual braces) installed. So that will be sometime around early-to-mid September, I suspect.

My case was, in my inexpert opinion, moderately bad to begin with, and the iBraces seem to have done quite a bit to move my teeth, although some crowding-related issues delayed hooking up all of my teeth to the braces until seven months after I started. There is still some way to go with closing my open anterior bite on at least one side (my ortho may be able to get a couple of incisors on the right side to straighten up and erupt to do that, I hope), and my lower eye teeth still need to rotate a little bit. It is likely that I will remain in iBraces for much of the rest of the next four months, and then I will be in Invisalign trays if I so desire.

I do fear a less-perfect result if using Invisalign, though, and I also worry that my course of treatment will be lengthened. Also, it will cost extra to make the switch to Invisalign, and that isn't cool. As mentioned before, in the event that I relocate, the cost of continuing to fly huge distances to see my ortho in her city will likely be little or no more than the cost of switching to Invisalign. I am going to discuss this at length with my ortho during my next appointment. In the end, I just want to get this over with as soon as possible.

Lingual braces are hell to begin with, but after two or three months in them, you should adjust rather nicely. I'm not going to lie to you, however; the first couple of months can be rather rough and can seriously make you question why you thought that getting braced was a great idea.

Do you think it would really be a less than perfect result? The website for invisalign say its just as good as normal braces?? What does your ortho think of them?
I don’t have my braces yet, I am still waiting for an appointment, but I am really hoping that once I do after around a year I will be able to do the switch.
Only if the result will be the same in the end though. I know the treatment may be slightly longer but I look at it in the way that, you can’t see invisalign and it would have to be more comfortable than braces, lingual or normal.
It would be similar to the plastic retainer you will have to wear after treatment which wouldn’t be so bad. I think if you can change then your really lucky. Most people stay in bulky braces for 2 years sometimes more. I am really hoping I will be able to do it….

sorry i can't help much with this either but i am currently in ceramics. Just started a little less than 2 months ago. My ortho is planning on having me braced 1.5 years then switching over to invisalign for the remainder of the treatment. (6 months)

Well, my ortho finally decided to switch me to Invisalign. I agreed to go along with the switch, but if I were remaining in an area with a good iBraces ortho, I think that I would have stuck with linguals. Honestly, the switch is likely to lengthen my treatment time by some months, and I don't know if I am going to have the discipline necessary to keep Invisalign trays in my gob for 20+ hours a day. While it is a joy to have lingual brackets, arch wires, buttons, etc., out of my mouth, a fixed appliances necessarily forces discipline upon patients.

My teeth have come so far, though, that I remain hopeful my time in Invisalign trays will be fairly limited. They really are looking very good.

Hi! So did your ortho decide that Invisalign would work on your open bite? Because that is what I have, my back teeth don't touch all the way, is that how yours were? Alot of people told me it wouldn't work, but one ortho in St. Louis told me that he thought it prolly would.

Invisalign claims that they can close open bites, but my ortho seems less convinced (or at least she did in my case). She has closed my open bite and generally straightened out my teeth with iBraces (a few chiclets need fine-tuning), and that's one of the reasons she seems comfortable enough making the switch. Now, there's still a distance to go, but I am most of the way there. If staying banded were an option (it isn't, really, because I'm moving to yet another city where linguals are uncommon), I would probably just have kept on the linguals because I would be likely to finish earlier, but I have to roll with the punches on this one.

The improvement in my teeth in 16 months (cosmetically-speaking, anyway) is pretty amazing. I am anxious to see the final result. Her guesstimate is that I will be in Invisalign for six months or so. Unfortunately, I have to wear one of those bloody ugly Essix retainers in the meantime, and it's going to take three months to get my aligner trays from Invisalign.