This week's clinical tip, courtesy of CDOCS, focuses on a common problem that can happen during orthodontic treatment planning.
Video transcript
"I'm Dr. Darin O'Bryan, and this is your CDOCS Tip of the Day.
"In this tip, I want to talk about doing ortho with peg laterals. The hardest thing to do is getting the tooth position exactly correct. So, the last thing the orthodontist wants to hear is, 'I want 3 mm on this side and 2 mm on this side,' or then some semblance of that on the other side.
"It's much easier for them to just close the spaces. So what I find to be much more helpful is to go ahead and build up the laterals. So like in this case, we're going to go ahead and take the measurement of the central to see if it's within the aesthetic ratios that we want.
"So we take a height, we take a width. In this particular case, it's about a 79% height-to-width ratio. So it's right in those aesthetic parameters that we want to see.
"With this, we now know what width we need to make our laterals. So then we go ahead and build up the laterals to make the correct height and the correct width, and then all the orthodontist has to do is close the spaces.
"Now you can build these up either with handstack composite, as in this case, because there's just minor amounts of tooth structure needed to be added. If it was severely pegged, we would use the CEREC machine and create a veneer. But once we have them all built up, now the orthodontist has to do ... all they have to do is do what they do best, which is close the spaces.
"Tell them to close the spaces completely, and you're going to have an aesthetic result. You're going to cut down your time in ortho. It's going to be easier for you and your orthodontist.
"So I hope this tip helps if you want to hear more about it, there's a discussion on CDOCS boards."
