solutions straightsmilesolutions.com and today we're going to recap on a couple of things
about knowing the age of your patient and i know you all are like well i know the
age of my patient i've got their birthday in my chart no that is a chronological age
you only know this age you don't know this age and this age at all three of these ages
need to be factored into creating a treatment plan for your young patient and i'm talking about
phase one patients primarily or patients under the age of 10. orthodontists know that there
are three different ages and we talk about it when we do our case presentations we say
this patient is eight years two months but their dental age you know is behind or their
dental age is more like age seven or age ten and their schedule age is advanced you know so
let's talk about that a little bit more and we're just going to do a real high level conversation
today if you want to dig more into anything regarding phase one phase one treatment planning
early treatment planning early intervention interceptive airway you should definitely
check out all of our free education we make it all completely free for you it costs us money
to produce and make but we don't really make any money on this so what we're doing is we're hoping
that putting this really correct information out there is unbiased factual information out there
will help you provide more access to care for your patients and do better orthodontic treatment
planning if there's a way that we can play it forward that's what we're doing so in any case
let's talk about this so for example you might have a girl maybe one crossed my path yesterday um
from one of my private clients with straight smash solutions yes we do help doctors with
their treatment plans if they want help you can check it out at straightsmilesolutions.com
thank you um but patient was really really advanced dentally patient with seven was the
chronical age chronological age i believe it was seven years two months or something like
that and then patient had a very advanced dental age of more like 8.5 patient had all um sixes in
that's your first mullers as well as all incisors fully in that's um 7 through 10 and 22 through 26.
we're fully in so that puts the patient at more like an 8.5 dentally so patient is advanced
now skeletally don't know there's only a few ways you're going to know about skeletal ages one you
can take a hamris x-ray if you want to learn how to do that it's really easy if you've got a staff
plate or a cbct that has a big enough plate you can totally do it you may need to ask the
manufacture a little bit more on guidance they may not know you may have to play with it it's
usually very similar settings that you use for a lateral ceph um so play with it we do them all the
time i've always done it it is and i've created a really great monograph to help you guys understand
how to read the bones in the hand which i think is a lot easier than reading the cervical neck bones
and that is available we have it available
in our store if you want to go to our store at streets mass solutions go to store
and we have documents and there is a document about how to read a handwrist x-ray
we've simplified it a lot so you kind of know is my patient peak pubertal is my patient postpuberal
is my patient not quite growing yet so then you have some idea of the skeletal age why does this
matter well you need to know because remember girls can go through puberty at age eight i mean
average might be ten and a half eleven now things have really changed over the last few decades but
these many are eight and some are 14 you know and that makes a difference because if you are trying
to target growth modification you're trying to grow a lower jaw you're trying to advance an upper
jaw to fix an underbite you're trying to expand an upper jaw to fix a crossbite or to improve airway
things aren't going to happen if your patient is fully grown and like i said in some girls this
could be eight so they could have a dental age of seven they may only have three teeth in but they
might be done growing it happens so if you do not you can't just look at the patient's chronological
age and say oh they're eight it's okay to wait no that is really ignorant because as an orthodontist
it's been so heartbreaking to me to have patients come in at 12 13 14 and to find out that we cannot
do ideal treatment for them without jaw surgery because the general dentist screwed up and didn't
refer the patient in now that's why orthodontists like to say all patients need to come in by
age seven so we can evaluate them if you guys don't have the tools to evaluate the patients send
them to us unfortunately there's quite a lot of orthodontists that aren't educated in this stuff
and they're fine with doing you know extractions to manage problems with bites which i'm not fine
with so you really need if you're not going to do interceptive treatment in your practice you
need to make sure you have an orthodontist who's airway friendly who believes in non-extraction who
believes in early intervention who understands the difference between a chronological a dental
and a skeletal age and the importance this puts into a treatment plan matter of fact
i really challenge you if you're not going to be doing interceptive treatment in your practice
to make sure the orthodontist that you're referring to believes in all this bring up
this conversation ask if that's part of their core values and if you're sending
them patients who clearly need early intervention and they're saying it's okay to wait till age 12
well you have the wrong orthodontist you need to find another one find another one to refer
to and if you don't have somebody to refer to time for you to be doing this in your practice because
it is the right thing to do it's something this is what honestly got me into consulting and less
away from my private practice because i realized i'd have a bigger footprint a bigger impact on
changing lives because it is so heartbreaking to see adults who are suffering from airway disorders
to see older teens having to get a jaw surgery because somebody
dropped the ball should have known so yes i'm gonna preach it but i'm gonna keep preaching
it until i change people's minds and until we can help these kids more so hopefully this was
educational for you keep this in mind whenever you see a little kid all right thanks so much