How can we help you?
We know you probably have lots of questions about orthodontic care, braces, and our practice. Take a look through our selection of questions we are often asked by our patients.
If your question isn’t answered here, no problem! Just give us a call or fill out our convenient online form, and we are happy to answer all your questions!
Invisalign Clear Braces
Swords Orthodontics aims to provide our patients with great smiles using effective, modern orthodontics, gently delivered in a friendly and healthy environment.
Swords Orthodontics just does orthodontics, so we don’t do other dental treatments. You should have a general dentist for looking after any other dental needs you might have, before, during, and after treatment.
We like to see that all the teeth are healthy before we begin, or if they’re not, then we’d need to know from a dentist what their condition is.
During treatment, you might need routine dental care, and we usually advise a check-up with your dentist after the treatment too.
Often, we need to work in conjunction with your own dentist for certain treatment plans.
Absolutely. Dr Murray is a certified Invisalign provider. Often called clear braces, Invisalign is a way of straightening teeth without fixing train track style metal attachments on to the teeth.
It certainly is quality treatment, and Swords Ortho use superior quality materials like Damon braces and Invisalign. Dr. Murray and his team keep fees low by being set up to deal with orthodontics, which makes treatment efficient and cost effective. Swords Orthodontics also gets good value when buying supplies, and has a laboratory on site to save on the fees they would have to pay if we had to get braces made up in someone else’s orthodontic laboratory.
Everyone is different, so it’s not really appropriate to give a prediction of the overall length of treatment until Dr Murray and his team complete an orthodontic examination for you and decide on a treatment plan that fits your own needs.
During orthodontic treatment, you can expect the appointments to last about 15 to 30 minutes. Sometimes they are longer at the start and right at the end.
Almost certainly – just get in touch with the practice on 01 810 7622 and we can arrange an appointment. We can discuss ways of getting your smile great again, although it is vital that you wear a retainer after orthodontic treatment.
We can often arrange this, but it’s best if we are also able to communicate with the original orthodontist to organise things.
Usually we can help.
Orthodontics usually makes a visibly significant improvement in the early stages of treatment, and then more time is put into correcting the fine details of how the teeth meet. So for many patients, we would expect to have a reasonable improvement by the time you’re getting your wedding photos done.
Generally for brides* we would offer to temporarily remove visible parts of fixed braces prior to the wedding and replace them afterwards (eg after they return from honeymoon) to continue the treatment.
This would usually be free for standard treatments, and a slightly different arrangement would apply for tooth-coloured (clear) braces.
*(We’ve never had a groom ask for it yet, but we’d do the same if it happened!)
Dr Murray advises that everyone who has orthodontic treatment should wear a retainer to maintain the benefits of treatment. They should wear it for a long time too, even if it’s just at night.
He sees too many patients in their 30s who had orthodontics as teenagers and didn’t wear their retainers, and now their teeth have moved and they need orthodontics again. So if you want to keep your teeth looking great, keep wearing your retainers. It’s just a little habit to develop, and then your lovely smile is there for everyone to see, day after day.
Invisalign is one of the great developments in modern orthodontics. It is a system of practically invisible tooth-moving clear braces, called “aligners”, that you can put in and take out yourself. That means:
- You can take them out any time you need to
- You can clean your teeth as normal
- Hardly anyone notices you are wearing braces or having orthodontic treatment
A computer makes a 3D virtual model of your teeth where they are now, Dr Murray uses this model to plan where they should be when they are at their ideal positions, and then a robot makes a series of plastic sleeves that fit over your teeth.
These plastic sleeves are see-through and practically invisible in the mouth, and each one is numbered and worn in a sequence. Each aligner is slightly different than the one before it, and each one moves your teeth slightly closer to your end result.
You can read more about it on our Invisalign page.
Dr Murray is a certified Invisalign provider.
Our aim is to get a great smile for our patients, and since every patient is unique, every treatment is different, and that means we use a full range of orthodontic treatments:
- Removable braces
- Fixed braces in stainless steel (“train tracks”)
- Fixed braces with colours
- Functional braces (“twin blocks”)
- Tooth-coloured/clear braces
- Invisible braces
- Combined treatments involving orthodontics and surgery or advanced dentistry
The materials and products I use are listed here, but the main brands you may have heard of are:
- DAMON, which would be my preference for my fixed braces
- DAMON CLEAR, which I would use for adults who want discreet braces that aren’t obvious
- INVISALIGN, which would be my invisible braces system
Many of our other braces are actually made in-house by our on-site orthodontic laboratory.
Clear braces is a pretty broad term that covers ways of straightening teeth without the typical appearance of metal train track style attachments bonded on to the teeth.
There are two basic sorts of clear braces:
- Tooth coloured attachments bonded directly to the teeth - these are like regular fixed braces, but more discreet as they are made of ceramic/glass-like material
- Clear aligners like Invisalign. There are other varieties and brand names of clear aligners, but Invisalign is so far ahead of the rest, most people only know it.