Is orthodontic treatment on the horizon for your younger patients?
Although it’s more traditional in the UK to start orthodontic treatment for children after all adult teeth are through, early diagnosis can allow some patients to benefit from having a simple treatment whilst they are still growing to help prepare their mouth for the bigger adult teeth.
Parents are often concerned about how their child’s teeth look at a very early age, but you don’t need to rush to refer them for an orthodontic consultation. It’s probably best to wait until they are at least 8 years old. However, there are some earlier signs you can look out for that may indicate braces are on the horizon for your younger patients:
- Perfectly straight baby teeth with no gaps, or even crooked baby teeth. This is most likely going to indicate a lack of room for all the adult teeth and potential need for extractions. In these situations it may be possible to make some more room with a simple removable brace but you need to gauge whether the patient has sufficient maturity for any treatment to be successful. In our experience this seems to be from the age of 9–10 years old.
- Premature loss of deciduous teeth, due to caries or trauma. This may also lead to a loss of space for the adult teeth and it would be beneficial for you to make a space maintainer to prevent drifting movement of the first molars, or loss of space for the anterior teeth.
- Persistent thumb sucking beyond the age of 6 years. This is well associated with increased overjet and anterior open bites, so wherever possible this should be discouraged as the first step before any appliances can be considered. There are some useful tools available to parents to assist with the cessation of finger / thumb sucking such as THUMBGUARD (http://www.thumbguard.co.uk/) and a lovely book written by a colleague of mine called Charlie’s Thumb by Runa Mowla-Copley which is available from Amazon.
Patients developing class II div 1 or div 2 malocclusions in the mixed dentition can often be treated with a two-stage approach with removable/functional appliance in the later mixed dentition. This can give the potential to avoid premolar extractions in the future to correct the malocclusion.
We hope you found this useful. If you have any questions or would like some more information about early referrals please email Ben (ben@parklaneorthodontics.co.uk).
New Website Functionality
To continue to improve the services available to our referring dentists and potential patients we have recently launched a new version of our website.
Apart from the look and feel of the site, the major change is that your adult patients are now able to book their orthodontic consultations online. Therefore, if you have any patients over the age of 18 who you feel would benefit from orthodontics, or who are actively seeking orthodontic treatment, please let them know they can book a consultation online. And the benefit to them is they get a £20 discount on the usual price of a consultation.
And of course you are still able to refer both children and adults online via the website. For those practices/dentists who had previously registered to refer online, you would have received an email with your new username and password. If you did not receive this, please email our Business Manager at shane@parklaneorthodontics.co.uk. For practices/clinicians that have not registered online before, and would like to do so, please click here.
Did you know?
The GDC standards for the dental team state that, as a dental professional, you must follow the guidance on medical emergencies and training updates issued by the Resuscitation Council (UK).
Whilst there is no mandatory requirement for the equipment below, a practice could be in a difficult position from a medico-legal point of view if a patient came to harm during dental treatment due to the lack of the minimum recommended equipment listed below:
- automated external defibrillator (AED)
- adhesive defibrillator pads
- clear face masks for self-inflating bag (sizes 0,1,2,3,4)
- oropharyngeal airways (sizes 0,1,2,3,4)
- oxygen cylinder (CD size)
- oxygen masks with reservoir
- oxygen tubing
- pocket mask with oxygen port
- portable suction e.g. Yankauer
- protective equipment – gloves, aprons, eye protection
- razor
- scissors
- self-inflating bag with reservoir (adult)
- self-inflating bag with reservoir (child)
We hope you’ve enjoyed July’s edition of our newsletter. If you have benefitted from it, please forward to other colleagues.If you have any questions, require further information about any of the articles, or would like to give us any feedback on the service we provide, please give either of us a call or email us on ben@parklaneorthodontics.co.uk Ben and Paula
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shane@parklaneorthodontics.co.uk