Invisalign®

Philadelphia, Main Line, and Ardmore, Pennsylvania Cosmetic Dentistry

Would you like to have your teeth straightened but not if it requires wearing metal braces?
A “metal mouth” is usually the last thing a busy working adult wants and we are fortunate now to have another way to do it. Invisalign® provides an alternative that is far more convenient and just as effective. It uses clear, removable aligners custom-made for your individual dental needs.

Philadelphia Cosmetic Dentist, Dr. Marshall offers Invisalign as part of her Philadelphia, Pennsylvania dental practice and will be happy to talk with you about it. Just call or send us an email to schedule a private consultation with her.

The first step is a full dental examination and analysis of your bite (occlusion). When many teeth are out of alignment, they can push the jaw joints out of alignment also, causing the condition known as Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMD). It brings many symptoms, most of them painful or uncomfortable. The reverse is also true: misaligned jaw joints can gradually push teeth out of alignment.

Being qualified in neuromuscular dentistry, Dr. Marshall can diagnose and treat TMD and if your teeth are misaligned because of TMD, she will devise a TMD treatment plan of which Invisalign could be a part.

How Invisalign Works

Once you and Dr. Marshall decide to go ahead with Invisalign, she will take X-rays, digital photos, and impressions, and send them to the Invisalign manufacturer, Align Technology, based in Santa Clara, California. Align technicians will put the impressions through a CT scan and create a digital 3D model of your teeth.

The Invisalign software is then used to simulate movement of your teeth to their correct positions, as determined by Dr. Marshall. The total correctional movement is divided into stages. After Dr. Marshall has reviewed this using Align’s program ClinCheck through her browser, she will either modify or approve it, and Align will make an aligner (or pair of aligners) for each movement stage.

After your entire series of aligners has arrived at our office, you will have an appointment for Dr. Marshall to explain how to use them and to give you the first few aligners in the series. Every two weeks you discard the current aligners and begin wearing the next pair. After six weeks, there is another visit for Dr. Marshall to monitor your progress and give you the next few aligners.

Wearing Your Aligners

You can remove your aligners any time if you need to, but for maximum effect, they should remain in position for at least 20 hours each day. They are designed so that each aligner exerts a certain amount of pressure on certain teeth in a certain direction. When those teeth have made their movement in response, the next aligner will exert different pressure, perhaps on different teeth and in a different direction. Taken all together they accomplish the entire straightening process. Therefore it is important for each aligner to be able to do its work fully, so that the next one can pick up the thread and carry things forward.

Your aligners need to be removed for eating and for dental hygiene. If you have a special occasion where you want to look your best, you could remove them for a few hours, but that should not occur very often.

The average treatment time is about one year, although if your misalignment problem is less severe it could be treated in about five months – a procedure known as Invisalign Express. If, at the end of your treatment, you decide that your teeth are not quite fully aligned, more aligners can be ordered, which Dr. Marshall will include in the cost as Refinement aligners.

Please see Affordability for more information on how we can help with financing.

If you are unhappy with the appearance of your smile but do not want to suffer the embarrassment of metal braces, Invisalign may be the answer. Please contact our cosmetic dentistry office today to schedule your personal consultation with Dr. Marshall. Happily welcoming patients for Philadelphia, Main Line, and Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

602 The Times Building
Suburban Square
Ardmore, PA 19003
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