Metal Mouth Message Board

Hi,

I had an adjustment a few days ago and just noticed I am missing the normal connection between the archwire and the brackets--an elastic band.

The tooth in question is badly rotated as you can see in the pic.

Anyway, something that I can see, but you probably can't in this pic, is a weird piece of metal that is branching off the main archwire and jamming into the bracket.

Does that mean that the bracket IS indeed connected to the archwire and everything's moving fine, or am I just missing an elastic band (ligiture) and need to call the office.

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

Maybe your orthodontist was trying to avoid breaking a bracket/your wire. Or maybe they are trying to make more room for your tooth to rotate?

BTW: I love the shape of your teeth! They are like movie star teeth

Can you believe these are the same teeth from a year ago ? Oh Gosh, I had it real bad.

I always like this story: at my first consultation my ortho took a quick look into my mouth and said " You have really pretty teeth" and I was just about ready to leave, thinking he was making fun of me. He calmed me down saying "Well, yes, they aren't aligned, but you you'll see ina year or two."


I believe in miracles now

Based on my experience I'm going to say yes it's normal. I have a tooth on my lower arch (same side actually, but the second tooth) that is rotated just as badly but it is half stuck behind my front tooth. They put in a spring to make space for it to come foward and afterwards hook it to the wire, and it looks just like that. The tooth does move, but in my case not as much as it should. Yours might be different.

Gah, I wish my camera would take good teeth pics!