Invisalign's clear aligners are removable, which means that patients can take them out to eat, drink, and care for their teeth. Invisalign Teen Compliance Indicators help wearers resist the temptation to remove their aligners more often than prescribed. Here's more from our Langley dentist on how compliance indicators can help to keep your teen's orthodontic treatment on schedule.
In order to keep your teen's orthodontic treatment on track, they will need to wear their Invisalign aligners for at least 22 hours every day.
Removing aligners more often, or for longer, than prescribed can lead to significant the setbacks in treatment. When patients don't comply with proper wear, treatment takes much longer than anticipated.
To help remedy this problem, Invisalign Teen aligners have compliance indicators. Compliance indicators make it easier for the orthodontist to tell if their patients are following directions.
What are compliance indicators?
Compliance indicators are a series of blue dots on the backs of the aligners, where they’re not visible when the aligner is worn. The blue dots will gradually disappear over the two week period the aligners are worn. When a patient fails to wear the aligners as they should, the blue dots will still be visible to the orthodontist.
If a patient comes back for checkups and the orthodontist repeatedly sees the blue dots, they’ll know that the patient is probably not following directions. This offers the orthodontist the opportunity to remind the patient and their parents why wearing the aligners as recommended is important. If the patient can't or won't comply with proper wear the orthodontist may discuss other treatment options, such as traditional metal braces.
Compliance indicators are also helpful in indicating to the orthodontist whether the treatment is effective. If a patient has been wearing the aligners as prescribed, yet the anticipated tooth movement is not taking place, adjustments can be made to the treatment plan.
Compliance indicators also help the patient to stay on track with treatment. Each set of aligners has been carefully calibrated to achieve a certain tooth movement during its stage of wear. Switching to a new aligner too soon, or leaving a given set in for too long, can hinder the treatment process.
If the patient has been taking their aligners out more often than they should be, or leaving them out for long periods of time, it becomes easy to lose track of how much longer they need to wear that particular set of aligners.
Since the compliance indicators will only fade after being worn for a full two weeks, it's easy for the patient to get themselves back on track.