One of the big things we’ve heard about is SureSmile, so that’s what we’re going to talk a little bit about, today.
What is SureSmile and how does it relate to your practice?
Broadly speaking, SureSmile is a truly holistic approach to orthodontic care. SureSmile is a convergent digital technology that is a large part of everything that we do. Convergence in the sense that it utilizes virtual or computer based technology and applies it to real world therapeutic applications.(Creation of robotic orthodontic archwires). SureSmile is a blend or harmony of two key components, diagnostic and therapeutic. It is in fact, the most advanced orthodontic software technology available to our profession. The diagnostic component is extremely powerful. It provides me with tremendous capabilities to strategize and plan the tooth movements necessary to perfect the alignment, fit of the teeth, and smile line prior to actual clinical treatment. Using this powerful suite of diagnostic toolsets and the information gleaned from these toolsets, we can apply this to our orthodontic therapy, creating great synergies.
The therapeutic component, specifically, is all about designing and fabricating customized or prescription archwires for our patients. This is in contrast to the old, “one wire fits all” traditional orthodontic approach to patient care. The fallacy in that approach is that no two patients are alike, SureSmile technology addresses these differences.
So let me contrast conventional orthodontics and the technology that we are employing using SureSmile, and how that empowers our practice.
Conventional orthodontics relies on a limited set of diagnostic tool sets as it is primarily relegated to the 2D or analog world. Standard radiographs and plaster casts or “static” digital models, are used for diagnostic purposes and involve performing certain measurements or analysis and unfortunately there are great limitations, in terms of the diagnostic information gained from these. Based on these toolsets, the traditional orthodontist will recommend a course of action, a treatment plan. Planning tooth movement in this way is almost primitive—in effect a “mind’s eye approach” to treatment planning. A “minds eye approach” is illusory, with an element of guesswork, a reactive model of care, more art than science. This is in contrast to the proactive model that is possible via SureSmile technology to accurately simulate and plan tooth movements through dynamic tooth modeling and sophisticated diagnostic software toolsets. Ultimately, customized SureSmile wires will be fabricated based on the design of the digital tooth models.
This is for traditional standards braces, right?
Yes, typically in traditional standard braces, the orthodontist will insert an orthodontic wire, and teeth will line up like beads along a chain on the wire. The problem with this approach is that tooth movement is largely uncontrolled and the orthodontist will then spend a considerable amount of time(and time means how long that patient is going to be wearing braces), modifying or changing the wire to help shift the teeth back to where they really belong. Managing tooth movement in this way is seriously flawed as you can see. It is much more efficient to plan tooth movement in advance and than design a wire to achieve optimal, targeted tooth movement. Traditional braces is also limited by the orthodontist’s manual capabilities and the ability to determine, by eye, the type and degree of bends that must be introduced into a wire to shift teeth back to their desired positions. You can see how challenging this is and how inexact as well-a highly reactive approach to care that fails to adequately address patient safety.
A “hope method”
It’s basically predicated on “I hope this will happen, but that clearly is not an acceptable approach to patient care either … it’s unpredictable.
For more information on Sure Smile braces all Dr. Mark Feinberg at 203-513-2014.