Invisalign Clear Braces
What Is Invisalign?
Maybe you’ve heard about clear braces or invisible braces. While the term sounds like something straight out of science fiction, it’s real, and it’s here at Swords Orthodontics. It’s probably made the biggest impact of any development in orthodontics in the last 20 years.
Invisalign is a system that uses clear plastic sleeve-like aligners worn over the teeth. Each one of these aligners is specially made to fit your teeth only and to move your teeth into the correct position according to the treatment plan that our orthodontists will create on a computer.
A series of these Invisalign aligners are created just for you, and each one moves your teeth further from where they are now and closer to where you want them to be. You’ll start out wearing one aligner, and then you’ll switch to the next one in the series at the prescribed time. As your treatment continues, all you have to do is wear and change your aligners as directed. You remove your aligners to eat and to clean them, but otherwise, they remain on your teeth. The aligners are thin and clear, making them virtually invisible.
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
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!)
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.
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.
Meet Our Doctor:
Dr. Stephen Murray
BSc BDS FDS RCSEng MSc MOrth RCSEdin
Specialist Orthodontist
Dr Stephen Murray is the principal orthodontist at Swords Orthodontics.
Originally graduating in Dentistry (BDS) from Queen’s University Belfast, Stephen enjoyed oral surgery, and he became a Fellow of the Dental Surgery faculty at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (FDSRCSEng) in 1995.
In 1999, he was awarded a Master’s degree (MSc) in Orthodontics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and became a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (MOrthRCSEdin) in 2000. He also has a first class honours degree in Biochemistry (BSc).He is registered ...
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Top 10 Tips about your Invisalign aligners
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