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Hey, breakages can happen, and we’re here to help! The good news is that most orthodontic mishaps are not urgent, and much can be done at home to immediately alleviate problems or discomfort. If a problem arises, please don’t hesitate to call our office for assistance. During regular hours, our team will help with triage, and after hours a phone number to reach an on-call clinical team member is always provided on the outgoing message. In the event of an emergency involving trauma to the face (such as might occur in a fall or sports injury), please seek medical attention immediately and then give us a call.

If you have broken or lost an appliance, please call us so that we can schedule an appointment to take an impression for a new device. If you are not an active patient with our office, we will notify you of any applicable fees for replacement appliances over the phone at the time of scheduling.

If you have broken, loose or poking parts of your braces, there are many things that you can do at home to help, or even correct the problem entirely. Please watch the following video to better understand the different parts of your braces. This will help you to find immediate solutions in our video library and to explain the problem to us when you call.

Emergency Prevention
As we all know, prevention is always better than having to solve a problem, so please take this opportunity to learn how to avoid orthodontic mishaps:

So straight-up, what’s ortho really like? Not all of us have had orthodontics treatment with a family member or close friend before, and there are a lot of questions that we hear a lot about what the process will really be like. THERE ARE NO DUMB QUESTIONS IN ORTHO!! Please, if you are wondering something, just ask one of our helpful and experienced team members – we’ve heard it before and we are happy to help!

Banding Day

Orthodontic treatment typically starts with your financial contract, followed by photos, an x-ray or CT scan, and then a digital scan of the teeth. If starting with an appliance, the scan will be sent to our in-house lab or an external partner lab to make the appliance.

If starting with braces right away, the banding appointment is about an hour long. Brackets are bonded to teeth with a type of glue that your dental assistant brushes onto your teeth with a little brush like is used for nail polish. Don’t worry, this is not at all painful and requires no drilling, shots or pokey implements! The doctor will check to make sure the brackets are in the perfect places to move your teeth where he wants them to go, and then the dental assistant will attach the wires to your brackets with tiny rubber bands in your choice of colors.

The whole banding process is very comfortable- the only thing that might feel strange is the stretching feeling from the cheek retractors that pull your cheeks back so that we can work in your mouth. Once your wires are in, you will feel a “weirdness” as your cheeks and lips (or tongue, in the case of lingual braces) get used to the feeling of all this “stuff” in your mouth.

The dental assistant will go over how to take care of your teeth and braces, and answer any questions that you have.

The Day After…

Orthodontic discomfort typically starts the evening of banding, and this is the feeling of your teeth starting to move. Don’t worry, this sensation will start to ease soon, and you can follow the instructions on this page to get some relief! Orthodontic movement is usually so gradual that you hardly feel anything, but when it is more rapid due to an adjustment in our office or a natural burst of movement, the mouth can feel tender or achy, especially when chewing. Cutting food into very small bites and choosing soft foods such as pasta, soups or smoothies can be really helpful on these days.

Next Adjustment Day

At your adjustments, your dental assistant will start by removing the little rubber bands that hold your wire to each bracket, in order to make changes to your wires. It can be a great feeling to brush and floss your teeth at the brushing station quickly while your wires are out! Fun fact: it’s actually the wires that are the true workhorses in ortho; the brackets are just what hold the wires onto your teeth. The wires are made from special heat-sensitive memory wire, and come in different shapes and thicknesses, depending on what we need your teeth to do. You might notice that your braces feel a little tighter when drinking hot versus cold beverages: heat makes your wires tighten up, and cold makes the wires more flexible. Your memory wires are the reason we don’t need to see you for weeks between appointments: they keep moving your teeth towards the position the doctor has directed them by choosing, placing and shaping the wire at your last appointment.

Just like at your initial appointment, your adjustment appointment will not be painful, but by that evening, you will feel the discomfort of your teeth moving again. It may help if you are able to take acetaminophen or ibuprofen prior to your appointment. Everyone is different, and some experience more discomfort than others from each adjustment. Once again, the good news is that this is just temporary and will soon pass. In the meantime, baby yourself with soft foods and self-care. Remembering how temperature-sensitive your wires are, an ortho adjustment is an excellent excuse to treat yourself to some ice cream on adjustment night – it’s practically a prescription from your orthodontist!

The Day-to-Day of Ortho

Having braces becomes normal-feeling to your mouth more quickly than you might expect. You’ll be surprised how quickly it becomes normal to you also to cut your food into smaller bites, and always know where your toothbrush and floss can be found. Most patients find that the day-to-day reality of orthodontics is more about these types of hygiene logistics than discomfort. However, from time to time you will undoubtedly have a place or two where the metal in your mouth starts rubbing tissue in your cheek or tongue in an uncomfortable way. Putting wax or Gishy Goo™ over the metal part that is rubbing provides immediate relief and allows the tissue to start to heal. Rinsing your mouth with salt water also helps to promote healing of any sores that form. Check out our Orthodontic Emergencies pages and see if any of the videos apply to your situation. Our team can help with advice and instructions over the phone, and will schedule a short notice appointment as needed.

Elastic bands are the other major tool in our orthodontic arsenal, and one that most patients will experience towards the end of their treatment. These are a type of elastic band that looks a little like uncooked ring pasta. They attach to tiny hooks on your brackets and help us to align the teeth in your upper and lower jaws in relation to each other, to perfect your bite. In many ways, the work we do with elastics is at least as important as the work that we do with braces and wires- but we need great teamwork from you to make this part of your treatment a success! Wearing elastics as often as you’re directed is key to getting your braces off on time. Not wearing your elastics means your results will not be as great as they could be, and you might be waiting longer to get your braces off. On the other hand, if you are a rockstar elastic wearer, you’ll get your braces off before you know it!

Debanding and Retainers

It’s finally the day you’ve been waiting for: your deband! You’ve been plotting a caramel corn party of epic proportions for months now, and have a pretty keen idea what your first braceless social media posts are going to look like… and now it’s finally the big day! Your deband appointment is usually about an hour and a half long. It begins like all of your adjustment appointments, by removing the bands and wires, before moving on to removing your brackets. If you’ve ever popped a bracket off your own teeth by biting into something too crisp or chewy, you’ll know how surprisingly easy it is for the dental assistants to pop them off when they know exactly how to do it. Next they’ll use their dental tools to remove any glue that is left sticking to your teeth, and then you’ll get the chance to take a peek in the mirror to see that smile you’ve worked so hard for!

Most patients will get at least one bonded retainer and a set of clear poly retainers on deband day. It’s extremely important to follow your dental assistant’s instructions on how often to wear the retainers, especially while your teeth are still settling. Your next appointment will usually be in about three months. As long as everything looks good at that appointment, usually we’ll let you know it’s fine to switch to just wearing your retainers at night. Please call us right away if you have any breakage or trouble with your retainers or if they aren’t fitting right, so we can get you in to take a look. Remember, included in your original contract is one year of following your retainers after your deband, so please don’t hesitate to call and come back in during that period! At the end of that year, we’ll have a quick last visit to make sure everything is fine, and then formally dismiss you from the practice. We hear from patients all day every day how happy they are to have gone through with orthodontic treatment, and we know you will be too!

One of the realities of orthodontics that wasn’t fully recognized until the last decade or so, is that without some type of retention (holding) device our teeth will try with varying degrees of determination and speed to return to their pre-orthodontic positions. In other words, you need to wear a retainer at least part of the time in future to hold your orthodontic results.

Included in every orthodontic treatment are retainers to hold your teeth in their new positions. We typically like to start with a bonded retainer that is like a fine wire glued to the backs of your lower front teeth. We supplement this with removable upper and lower clear polymer retainers, that you will typically wear full-time for the first three months after debanding, and thereafter only at night.

Orthodontics is an investment in yourself or your child, resulting in better function, comfort, aesthetics, and confidence for a lifetime! There are many tools to help make orthodontics affordable.

Even the best orthodontic insurance is typically only designed to cover a portion of treatment fees. However, many employers offer Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), Health Spending Accounts (HSAs), or other programs, which allow pre-tax funds to be used for orthodontic care.

We offer interest-free financing over the course of treatment. This means that after the initial down payment, the treatment fee may be paid in monthly or annual increments over the estimated length of treatment.

Additionally, Ames & Peterson Orthodontics does participate with Care Credit, which can be used for the down payment or to obtain longer payment terms than we can extend in our office. However, payment with Care Credit typically involves interest, which would increase the overall out-of-pocket cost of orthodontics. If you are interested in applying for Care Credit, please visit their website for more information.

Because treatment plans and therefore treatment fees vary widely for each individual, we make our new patient consultations completely free, so that you can come in and get all of your questions answered. Please contact our office to schedule yours today!

Yep, we sell a toothbrush. Nope, you don’t have to buy it. Why then? We really, honestly, truly think you should use a powered toothbrush like this. It removes twice as much plaque at the gumline versus your regular toothbrush. Bam. (Have you seen the disgusting decalcification video yet?) Need we say more?

There are specially-designed orthodontic brush heads to make cleaning your braces even easier. Fuss-free timer vibrates, automatically letting you know minimum amount of time to spend in each part of your mouth as you brush. It’s Bluetooth connected – no, stay with us here, we giggled too at first – which means you can check your (or your kid’s) brushing stats on your phone. Are you (or they) really brushing as much and as well as you think?

Pressure sensors in the brush detect and alert you when you are brushing too hard. You can see these pressure metrics in the app also, and while you might not dig the geekery-for-geekery’s sake quite as much as we do, you can use this feedback to learn to brush in a healthier way. Oh, and did we mention it cleans your teeth twice as well as a manual brush?

It comes with the usual rechargable toothbrush handle, recharging base, travel case, plus three replacement toothbrush heads, package of ortho-friendly superfloss, toothpaste and mouthwash, and a holder to mount your smartphone to your mirror if you want to watch your timer and metrics while you brush!

And of course, we sell it for a lot less than you get it for online.

For some patients, jaw surgery (orthognathic surgery) is an important part of their orthodontic treatment plan. These surgical procedures correct upper and lower jawbone discrepancies, resulting in a corrected occlusion (bite) and improved facial balance. Surgical orthodontics can address concerns with facial aesthetics as well as airway and TMJ problems. Please visit our Orthodontic Video Animation Library for more information on some surgical orthodontic treatments.

We keep an ever-growing library of orthodontic video animations on our YouTube page for your convenience.

If you’ve ever watched a video animation in our office regarding an appliance, treatment type, or compliance, that animation is likely also present on our YouTube page for you to watch again from home.

If the video you are interested in is not yet found on our YouTube page, please let our office know that you would like to have access to it, and we will be sure to add it.

There’s no doubt about it, braces are admirable food catchers, and it’s important to keep your teeth extra-clean during orthodontic care! We are very proud of the work that we do to educate and guide our patients towards better oral hygiene during their orthodontic treatment.

At the banding and first follow-up appointments, our dental assistants and hygienists devote extra time to making sure patients understand how to take the best care of their teeth and gums. We assess and discuss oral hygiene at every subsequent visit, and work closely with general dentists in monitoring patients’ oral hygiene status.

Time to “brush up” (sorry) on your oral hygiene techniques! Below are videos that show how to brush using manual or powered toothbrushes, and using interproximal brushes. Sometimes also called interdental brushes, these tiny brushes can help into the tiny spaces under wires and around brackets that larger brushes may miss.

As handy as interproximal brushes can be during orthodontics, they are not a replacement for flossing, which is still necessary to maintain the health of teeth and gums. Flossing around braces is made easier using a stiff floss threader or SuperflossTM , which has a built-in stiffened end that can easily be threaded around braces and bonded retainers.

For any patients or prospective patients who have particular challenges or reluctance with oral hygiene, we do have a “scare video” that we sometimes share. We do want to make sure that patients understand the risk of decalcification with poor oral hygiene during orthodontics. WARNING: this video is horribly, terribly, mortifyingly gross!

We have a great patient portal that allows our patients to see scheduled appointment, update their contact information remotely, and view their photos and xrays, 24 hours a day.

Designated billing parties (including adult patients) are able to do all of these, plus they are able to view and print financial information and make convenient online payments.

Observation Recall is for young patients who do not need braces right now, but might when they are older. We schedule a complimentary recall appointment once or twice a year to monitor the patient’s facial growth and tooth development. There is no charge for recall appointments, and they take just 20-30 minutes.

Observation Recall appointments give you important information about your child. At the appointment, we check the development of the face and jaws, and see whether permanent teeth are erupting as they should. We talk to you about changes that have taken place since the last visit, any developmental issues we see, and whether treatment should start now or wait for additional growth.

Observation Recall appointments help to prevent problems through early detection. Recall appointments are extremely important between the ages of 7 and 10 when the patient is still growing. Orthodontic treatment is effective at any age, but it can be faster, easier and less expensive if it begins during this period of greatest facial growth.

Typically, 65% of facial growth occurs by age 10, and the growth process is complete by age 20. There is a large window of opportunity to address developmental problems if treatment begins at the right time.

Our philosophy with children is that if an issue is likely to correct itself over time and natural growth, we will gladly let you know and continue to see your child in Observation Recall as they continue to grow. However, we also recognize that there can be social concerns, such as teasing or bullying relating to appearance of misaligned teeth, and we recognize these concerns to be absolutely legitimate since they can profoundly impact the confidence of some children. We listen carefully to your concerns for your child, and offer treatment options to meet them.