hey it's dr amanda with street smile solutions street smile solutions.com and today we're going
to talk about the difference between self-like guiding aka daemon braces versus traditional
braces which are held on with a little rubber tie so i have a picture here of the self-ligating i'm
pretty sure most of you know what the traditional braces look like the wire just sits in the bracket
and there's a little rubber tie that goes over it that's often in different colors
so benefits of self-legating are that you actually need it depends on the case if you have a crowding
case you know and not a spacing case then it might be quicker to do self licating brackets but
most doctors usually charge extra for self-ligating brackets so the question to me is
what's your difference between your self-ligating price brackets and your invisalign price because
often it's actually higher or the same i've always charged an extra probably 500 to a thousand
for stuff like eating brackets because they're significantly more expensive for the doctor to
buy like two three four five times more expensive per bracket they're just very sophisticated um
sometimes doctors will charge the same so just questions to ask the benefits if you have a
crowd in case you have a space in case there's no benefits so there's no sense because especially if
you have to pay more right you don't have to pay more than no but if you have a crowding case it
will save you appointments so normal appointments when you're in the initial phase which is the
leveling and aligning stage of braces which is the initial stage when you're just undoing
all the crowding um if you have self locating brackets you may only need to come in like a
couple times in the first year you know like maybe every two to three months as opposed to every
six to eight weeks or four to six weeks so it will save you a ton of time um they can put a
slightly bigger wire in they can just close the little trap door so the difference is is that
the wire sits in this little bracket which has a trap door which is snapped down over it so
a regular rubber tie or an o-ring that holds the wire in the bracket that has to be changed
it will degrade over time so its tightness you know degrades and dissipates so you have
to get it changed it only really lasts up to maybe i would say six to eight weeks whereas
the little trap door if you put a nice big heavy wire in and slap that trap door down
you're good for a few months so less appointments probably more efficient assuming your doctor puts
the brackets on correctly if you're a crowding case now if you're a spacing case there's no
benefit because you're going to need power chains which are rubber ties anyways that are
all connected so that's pretty much what i have to say so they're great i mean if you're really
really not wanting so first of all let me circle back to one of the things that i preface which is
in the right hands with an educated doctor who knows what he's doing and in residency you don't
learn a lot about invisalign you learn a lot about braces but you don't learn a lot invisalign
or at least we didn't when we went there we weren't even really allowed to do it so um
it's fundamentally the same thing same principles but a different way of getting what you want right
so in my hands i can get i can do everything with invisalign there's no case i can't do
with invisalign um sometimes i can do things faster with braces or more efficiently or more
predictably but doesn't mean i can't do it right some cases i can do faster with invisalign so
but i'm also very confident and very experienced not all orthodontists are very experienced with
invisalign of course you can tell by looking at where they are in the invisalign doctor locator
it does not mean that they're a bad doctor if they don't do a ton of invisalign they might be a great
doctor they just don't do a lot of plastic it's one of those things if you're fully committing
to working with plastic you're going to want to do more plastic and less braces because once you love
doing it you love doing it so but anyways what i was basically saying was that you know you got to
check out the prices you got to think about your own experience if you really don't like the idea
of having plastic in your mouth and some people don't they would rather have wires and brackets
because especially if you're a big snacker or a big coffee sipper throughout the day the trays may
not work for you you may not like that it's a very much a change of lifestyle and with traditional
brackets you can eat whatever not whatever you want you can't eat hard and crunchy things but
you can at least drink whatever you want and for some people that will work better so anyways
just things to think about i do like self-legating brackets they are significantly more expensive but
in the right case it will save you time if you are wanting brackets and wires alright thanks so much