For this week's clinical tip, Dr. Shalin Shah of CDOCS returns to discuss how often clear aligners should be changed out in order to help the patient achieve his or her orthodontic goals.
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Video transcript
"Hi. This is Shalin from CDOCS. Today's tip of the day is the frequency and changing of aligners.
"Our general recommendation is to give the first aligner and to allow the patient to wear it for three weeks. The reason for this is that initially the bone is not prepared to allow passage for those teeth through it. So what needs to happen is there needs to be a consistent pressure for at least the first several days -- such that all of the osteoclasts, the osteoblasts, cytokines, the prostaglandins, arachidonic acid -- all of the inflammatory molecules and cells can go ahead and populate themselves at that critical threshold to allow that bone turnover to actually occur, to allow the tooth, the teeth to pass.
"So allowing that three weeks of the first aligner to sit there, you actually get the control inflammation to be able to come into that entire area. And then you allow enough time for the teeth to actually move every aligner. Subsequent to that, we generally recommend that the patient wear it for two weeks before switching out.
"Of course, if the patient feels that teeth are moving a lot faster, the liner becomes much more passive. Through good patient education, through good connection with your team in your office, and good vigilance by having enough frequent appointments to check that the aligners are tracking as they should, then certainly the patient can go ahead and increase that frequency to whatever they feel that is right and of course to what you agree with.
"I hope that this is of help. And don't forget to always enhance our orthodontic-restorative relationship and to make sure that you refer by the age of 7 to your local orthodontic team. Thank you."
