amanda with straights mountain solutions straightsmouthsolutions.com and today we're
going to do another elastics video yes y'all can't get enough of them there's still so many
questions about them so i'm going to try to take it from a different direction specifically we're
going to talk about the size and the strength of elastics how to pick the size the diameter i
mean by that and how to pick the strength and that really depends on what you're trying to accomplish
let's go over the major classifications of elastics of course i have other videos
specifically about this if you'd like to watch my other videos on elastics best way to do it is to
go to my youtube channel not your youtube channel go to your youtube channel put in street smile
solutions in the space bar that'll bring you to my youtube channel which has a green banner once
you're in mine there's a tiny little magnifying glass that is kind of top right not corner but
top right put in any keyword like elastics or class 2 or box in there and it'll bring up all
the videos that i already have anyways that being said let's move on this is going to be
a more advanced conversation since we've done tons of videos on elastics before but let's go over our
quick classifications starting in no particular order this is class three sorry it's a little
hooked right there it probably should be right there but got stuck on that bracket class three
class two triangle triangles can come in all different orientations this could be a triangle
this could be a triangle this can be a triangle as long as it hooks on three different points it's a
triangle so lots of different triangles okay this is what we call box elastic again box elastics
can be here they can be here they can be here okay they can be here it might involve just a few teeth
or more teeth again same thing depends on what you're trying to do and what wire you're on okay
this is a posterior box elastic posterior box elastic anterior box elastic okay and here's
more triangles triangle triangle triangle okay so let's talk about size and strength and what you're
trying to do so it depends on what you're trying to do again i can't say that enough and what wire
you are in if you are on what i call a light wire which should be 12 14 or 16 then you need to use
a light elastic a light elastic is normally two to two and a half ounces i've seen it one and
a half up to two and a half ounces anything past two and a half ounces is not a light elastic okay
if you like i said you're on 12 14 or 16 light elastic okay and you need to have a big enough
diameter to accomplish for what you're trying to do so everybody's mouth is going to be different
depending on kind of how the teeth sit how big the teeth are lots of different variables you're just
going to have to try them in it's like trying on shoes you want once you've figured out if
you're doing light medium or heavy like we just talked about it then you need to figure out what
orientation and how it's going to hook on and what diameter you need to pick so obviously the
bigger the diameter or the bigger the i don't know if you call this volume but you know of the um
cubic mass of the space that you're creating the bigger the diameter of the elastic needs to be
right so here is probably going to be like maybe quarter this is going to be maybe quarter this
might be 5 16 5 16 this could be 3 16 3 16 this is usually 3 16 3 16 for me
okay so it really depends like i said how big it needs to be yes and it should be the tightest
possible elastic to get that orientation the patient can comfortably take on and take off
if it takes some 30 minutes to put it on it's too tight okay they should be able to comfortably do
it it should feel tight when they're at rest it should feel tight when they're talking if
it's slack at rest it's not going to work because half the day or more their mouth is going to be at
rest right so there needs to be tight sometimes if i'm on the fringe or on the fence i'll give
them two different diameters one a daytime one which is slightly bigger and nighttime one which
is slightly tighter that works really well too so don't stress out too much okay so we went over the
light elastics 12 14 16 i would call the medium elastics as 18 or 16 22 or even maybe 17 25 for
those wires so those would be medium medium again is around four ounces it could be four and a half
or could be three and a half somewhere in there if it's less it's more like medium light if it's
more it's like medium heavy okay and different brands are gonna have different strengths and
ounces so just find the one that works for you but i think you have to stock quite a few but i don't
recommend buying them in major bulk if you buy from any ortho distributor they're going to make
you buy them in crazy amounts of bulk and they do go bad in a year or two they the latex starts
to wear out and non-latex ones are terrible so it's better to even just get them from ebay they
sell just a few you know um or other places where they can sell just you know five or ten packs and
one pack is normally in the last patient about two weeks so yeah you're gonna need a lot of packs but
most commonly i recommend stocking light medium to heavy in 3 16 one quarter and even maybe
5 16 maybe not the legs i don't use that that much but 5 16 and then that's pretty much it
maybe you need a 1 8 here and there it's very rare um mostly going to be using one quarter and 3 16
um for the most part maybe 5 16. all right hope that was helpful thank you