hey this is dr. amanda with straight smile solutions and today we're here
again with another great video thank you so much for the orthodontic laboratory
comm for sending us this demo model this demo expander this demo retainer because
we're gonna be talking about retainer class today and we're be talking about
adjusting retainer class specifically as you can see i have my two trusty pliers
here this is my three-pronged plier why is it called three people um because it
has three prongs right and this is what i call a bird beak plier there's a
couple other names for this i think some people call it like a 1:39 plier or
something like that but basically it has a square tip and then a rounded tip so
if you do not have these two pliers i would not attempt to start adjusting
retainers yet because you need both of those alright so we have three different
types of clasps here okay we have a see clasp a ball clasp and an atom's clasp
these are your three basic types of retainer clasps when you make retainers
or any type of orthodontic compliance you can specify which class do you want
but my suggestion unless you have a specific reason is to leave it up to the
lab tech to select the best clasp and you can tell them that and if you don't
it's pretty much understood that they're gonna select the best one for that case
personally this is not my favorite at all I don't like these because they Bend
easily and get distorted and things happen so this is definitely my favorite
for mixed dentition the Adams class pretty indestructible hard to mess up
and they fit pretty well down size is sometimes the patients are going to bite
on the clasp there's not much you can do about that if they do they just need to
get used to it ball costs are great but they break easily so if you put one on
you want to have many because if you lose one it's always good to have
another one but besides that the only other thing you got going on here that
needs to be adjusted is the labial bow and this is totally adjusted wrong the
way this came on this model or maybe someone was playing with it already but
this is definitely not granted the teeth are chipped not where it should be so
it's over adjusted so but today we're gonna be focusing on
these three clasps so basically in a nutshell this is the way I adjust them
and every one might be slightly differently do this whoo
this one they stop i if I can get this whoa great fit orthodontic lad there we
go got it off okay that's a great sign if it's tight all right
so to adjust a si clasp I just tighten a tiny bit right here the main thing is
the ball needs to be under the undercut it cannot impinge in the gingiva and
when I try retainers in the first thing I'm gonna do is snap them down and check
the gingiva and see if they are you know engaged or impinging the gingiva at all
cuz start there okay and once you're kind of out of the woods then make sure
it's seating fully the acrylic needs to be fully seating if it's rocking or
anything like that it's not ready yet for adjusting so before you start
messing with the clasp you want to make sure that your retainer is actually
seating in seating comfortably once you get acceding and it's a little too loose
then you can start adjusting the clasp so this one's an easy adjust this one's
also a pretty easy adjust you're just gonna use your three prong okay and
you're just gonna tighten it just a tiny bit right there at the little bend okay
and sometimes you need to tighten it here and here there's a tiny squeeze a
little bit goes a long way if you overdo it you can either flip this around and
do it the other way or you can use the square portion of this to go ahead and
loosen it and you know what you're just gonna need to play with it to try to
practice it but you know in a nutshell it's something like this okay to tighten
like this okay to leave string you need to do like this or you can flip it
around and do like this okay all different ways no wrong or right way
with the addams clasp I always start adjusting closest to the
acrylic okay and if you're trying to tighten it I'm gonna squeeze like this
and this both spots okay you're trying to loosen it the opposite generally okay
but remember this will often interfere with the occlusion but not a huge deal
if it's in mixed dentition so that's pretty much it that's how I adjust
retainer clasp it's gonna take a lot of trial and error
for you to learn how to do this more ideally as for the labial bow that's a
whole hoo it's a lot more challenging okay so you know hopefully your labia
bows are coming ideal for sure and if you're using this just for functional
appliance for ortho it's probably not a huge deal at all to have the labial Bowl
you know contacting an ideal but if you're using it for actual retention it
is a huge deal so hopefully we'll get to that at a later time all right have a
great day thanks for listening to our video and as always visit straight smile
solutions comm for more information or fresh suggestions on what you want us to
teach a review you're looking to increase your orthodontic production do
visit us visit our whole video library and all our youtubes alright have a
great day straight smile solutions calm