Had a patient today who come back for new retainers 10 years after the end of her treatment.
Her lower retainer was cracked but otherwise both upper and lower were in remarkably good condition.
The alignment of her teeth had maintained nicely, I was delighted with this and it would be great if we could get some photos to show
- the alignment before treatment,
- just after treatment finished and
- 10 years after treatment finished.
So we’ll make her new retainers. We have a scanner here, so there was no moulding of her teeth needed to make the retainers, and we’ll fit them soon.
The thing is… her teeth were so straight, and she was so happy with them she didn’t have an obvious reason to motivate her to go to the dentist, so she hadn’t been in a while. Accordingly, I carried out a mouth cancer screening and advised her that I wouldn’t be doing a full gum exam today and she should attend a dentist to confirm they are healthy and check her teeth and restorations.
What I did notice, and what she wasn’t aware of, were cavities on the sides of her upper molar teeth. Because we take comprehensive photographs when we finish treatment I could go back to them for reference and it was clear that the cavities weren’t there 10 years ago.
Now these cavities aren’t due to decay, it’s not due to sugar in the diet and germs on the teeth. It’s not due to someone neglecting their teeth in the typical way. In fact, the opposite is sort of the case. They are due to the cumulative abrasion of hard brushing (or possibly mechanical stress fractures according to some dentists) but because they develop very gradually, they aren’t obvious day to day.
So we have a patient that was acting in what they thought was the best way for their dental health, but very slowly making things worse over time and completely unaware of it.
The moral of the story is – unremarkably – that wearing retainers is a good thing, but it’s also that regular dental visits are a good thing.
That includes during orthodontic treatment, but definitely after, because you want to have a lot of after.
