New to invisalign--when did you get to see your Clincheck?

[John37]

About 5-6 weeks after my molds were taken, the dentist called and said I could come in to look at the Clincheck. He likes to make revisions in the Clincheck rather than just going with the first thing Invisalign sends back. We were also debating whether I needed my wisdom teeth removed and if I needed IPR (where they shave some of the teeth to make room). So he had to take extra time with that.

The first time I looked it didn't make sense. He said I didn't need my wisdom teeth out and we didn't need IPR. After looking at several views I noticed that the initial alignment of my top and bottom teeth was off in the computer. There was a 3mm gap from my bottom front teeth to the top front teeth. I showed him my normal bite had these teeth touching. (My normal bite had my molars out of alignment, but the computer had the molars aligned but the front teeth off.) So both he and I were disappointed that he would need to redo everything but happy to have caught this, as it would have led to major problems if I had gone with that treatment plan.

About 2 weeks after that he had the revised Clincheck ready. He showed me two options, one where the wisdom teeth stayed in and I would need all of my front bottom teeth (like 8 teeth) shaved to make room. The other option was to have all 4 wisdom teeth extracted (only 1 was in straight anyway) and not have any IPR. It looked good, so I went with the later option and had the wisdom teeth extracted the next week. (I wanted the more natural look of not shaving/reshaping any teeth.) I got the aligners 3-4 weeks after that.

Looking back I think I should have asked for them to give me the Clincheck movies from all the different angles (on CD, flash drive or email) so I could look them over for a day or two before approving the plan. There may be questions or concerns that you don't think of on the spot when you are looking at the Clincheck. We were lucky to have caught the first mistake, so maybe having the movies for a day would prevent others from a similar mistake.