it's dr amanda with street smile solutions street smile solutions.com and today we're going to talk
about customizing your shorts appliance so you can do so many cool customizations to power supplies
so this is a schwarz appliance if you don't know what a schwarz appliance is please watch my other
videos on schwartz appliances you can just go into my youtube and type in the word schwartz
my youtube not general youtube in general but our straight smile solutions channel youtube and type
in schwartz if you still can't find it you can email me and i will send you a list of appliances
or sorry of videos having to do with shorts or any topic because i'm pretty fast with knowing
where my stuff is but anyways great expansion appliance for growing kids can even be used in
teens that aren't growing for some tipping but it can be customized depending on what your patient
needs whether you want to move a pre maxilla forward you want to kick a single tooth forward
you want to de-rotate a single tooth while you expand or if you have a deep bite patient you can
put on this one i don't know if this one has one yeah this one i think probably maybe not you can
put on stack acrylic here for an anterior bite plane to help level the carpet speed or if you
have a long face patient or post an anterior open patient you can stack acrylic on the back teeth
here or even on the opposing teeth here like this over this whoops flipped over this over this
um to help to prevent tipping and extrusion of the posterior teeth as you expand so lots of
ways to do it i am not a huge fan of doing all this funky stuff um especially anything that is
bonded over teeth like as glued to teeth on fixed retainers so yes periodic uh theoretically you
could do a fixed expander um that went on the top and you could have acrylic going
over the teeth that's definitely possible but you're basically bathing the teeth all day long
in whatever the patient is drinking or eating it's really hard to clean under the molders i
don't mind doing that like um on the palette you know for saying if you want to do an anterior bite
plane because the palate really can't get decay you know you just use a you just use like a water
pick to clean underneath it but on the teeth i'm not that comfortable because i've seen patients
with like full-on blown-out teeth from doing this and if they ghost you or they disappear
or if there was a coveted hypothetically scenario happening and they wouldn't let um offices reopen
in person again you'd be really in trouble with that case so i prefer to do everything funky that
involves teeth as removables and to be honest it's all about partnering with the right team of
patients and parents if you're feeling negative vibes you know from either the parents you know
being disinterested not trusting um edgy or from the patient um you know teens are teens so you
can't always tell but i really like to sometimes get the teen separate from the parents maybe
you're doing finance with the parents in one room and then you kind of pull the teen away or have a
few minutes with the team and say hey does this sound good to you what do you think about this
because i want to know if they're honestly going to be able to do this you know are they
motivated to do this are they motivated to improve their smile are they motivated to wear removable
appliance um and more often than not the teen is fine with it and a lot of times the parents
speak to the teens they're like he's not gonna wear them and you'd be surprised because when
you explain the alternative to the teen and what a fixed appliance versus a removable appliance
is like how it affects their lifestyle their ability to eat speak talk play sports discomfort
99 times out of a hundred the teen is awesome it's like i will wear this especially if you
build into the contract that if the patient is non-compliant there'll be an additional fee of
x to convert to a fixed appliance and you build that in and both the team and the parents sign
it that usually solves the issue very very rare have i had to convert um if i did it was because
i didn't do my due diligence at the beginning at selecting the right team and explaining what i
expect from them and what the implications would be if they did not if they were non-compliant
if you don't have that conversation which takes two minutes at the very beginning
you will sometimes fail you know and you'll get a team that's non-compliant just because they
don't understand the why and teens in general i mean if you've been a teen everyone has who's
probably listening to this but if you have teenagers at home they're going through a lot
you know they're going through a lot they're confused sometimes they're just looking for a
battle with their parents usually they're not looking for a battle with the doctor
so if you're candid with the teen and what you expect for them the vast majority of teens if
you listen to them and let them make some choices even if it's just about colors or about picking
one thing from another in terms of the experience they're gonna be awesome so teens don't scare
me let's put it that way and you know i don't know teens smell fear like dogs do so if you're
awkward and nervous around a teenager they're going to not take you seriously so be confident
be friendly you know and really enjoy orthodontics all right hopefully this was helpful thanks