How often should aligners be worn ?

[Freedom Dental]

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[Freedom Dental]

As we all are aware aligners being worn at least 22 hours a day is vital for aligner therapy success.
Howevere we are treating human beings and predictability of compliance of aligners varies.
The question is what are the factors that contribute to predictable results.
In my experience I have seen patients wear aligners 22+ hours and still get indifferent results and others who admit to poor compliance and still get great results.
These results can be explained by the fact that there multiple factors that contribute to aligner success.

[Freedom Dental]

These factors can be catargories by
1 patient factors
2 Aligner factors
3 software / clinician factors

[Freedom Dental]

1 Patient factors
– Medical history
– Racial and genetic predisposition
– Oral hygiene
– self administering and self checking

This last point in my opinion is a significant factor as to why aligners being worn 12-16 hours a day can be more effective than 22 hours a day.

Simply if the aligner is optimally fitting then it will work better even over reduce time per day.
This becomes important in accelerated treatment success also.
Therefore patient education in the initial visit on how to wear, clean ect is important but how to ensure an aligner is optimal fitting and how to check with floss daily is vital.
The use of chewies, munchies , vpro accelerant ect become as important for aligner success and accelerating ortho treatment as compliance.

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