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“As an orthodontist, I have developed my own philosophy for treating the complete dentition and for treating early mixed dentition treatments in Phase I and Phase II treatments and now, trying to treat at an extremely early age as those teeth are trying to erupt and found it to be the most successful part of orthodontics because I can see things –problems that would normally develop being prevented by wearing this Nite-Guide and see Class II’s, crowded cases and deep bites correcting as the permanent teeth are erupting, and not allowing those problems to develop. I can see the age range of our patient spectrum changing dramatically now. Where the majority of our patients used to be teenagers and young teenagers, I would say that now probably a third of our practice are these very young kids – 4, 5, and 6 years old. I think we, as orthodontists in the past, have been locked into just waiting for the permanent teeth to come in and treating people when they are 11 and 12 years old. It’s important for us to realize that there is a lot that can be done at an early age. I would say this to you as orthodontists, there is probably no downside in starting a patient at 5 to 7 years old with a Nite-Guide.
Starting these patients at an early age now has probably been one of the most exciting, one of the most fun things that has happened to my practice in a long time. Because here we have an age group of four to seven years old, little kids that we haven’t dealt with before, and I found out that they are just a delight to work with.
I’ve noticed mother’s, especially, getting very excited about wanting to start treatment early for the young child when that first tooth grows in. They are the ones that want to get started and now that I have an appliance that I find is very useful to them at that particular age, I find that meets both our needs.
When we started using the Nite-Guide on very young patients and also my staff was very apprehensive about just how do we take records on these young kids that are four and five years old. Our fears have gone away because we’ve seen that those young kids are probably the best patients we have around our practice now.
As far as insurance coverage is concerned, this appliance is considered like any other orthodontic appliance and if they have any orthodontic coverage, they will have the coverage that will cover this.”
~ Dr. Warner Young, Orthodontist, Redmond, VA
“Early treatment – it’s been the biggest practice builder of anything I do. Anything. I don’t do it as a practice builder; I do it because that’s me. If something is wrong, I’ve got to get started fixing it. I can’t wait for it to get worse. It doesn’t make sense to me to let something develop completely wrong and then try to correct it. It’s against my beliefs. But because of that, I have referrals; I don’t have to go looking for patients. It’s an automatic referral system. One family to the next family and relatives. It’s probably the biggest practice builder. I don’t even bother doing much else, to be honest. I keep pretty busy with this. As far as time saving, my treatment plan actually is spread out a little more than just jumping in and doing a two year quick treatment when they are older, but I am not spending as much time with the patient. I am not doing as much with them. It’s guidance, but since I am in there at let’s say age 6, I’ve got to be taking care of them not watching them until they are probably twelve or thirteen. So, there is a time span – a time when I am not doing much, so if you want to talk the amount of time that I put in on a case, I put in less time.
I definitely feel that the earlier you can guide anything, and this probably applies to any part of the body. With this orthodontic appliance you can guide it to grow correctly, you’ve got something permanent. You have what nature intended, and it is not going to change from there. You don’t worry about relapse.
Now, as a bonus, if you do early treatment with these techniques – the Nite-Guide is probably one of the nicest things that came along to aid me in doing something like this. You’re guiding it, the work is easy – you’re guiding teeth and you’re making the case easier. When you get to a final phase, they’re all easy cases – no more difficult cases. You’ve eliminated 90% of them, just by this early guidance so I have no tough cases any more unless the ones that walk in at an older age – those are the only tough ones. The rest I’ve guided so that I’ve got finishing touches to do by the time they get all their dentition in.
At an early age, the percentage is very very high. There is not many that I couldn’t get going doing something. Some type of guidance. To me it’s way up in the 80 – 90%. There are very few that you couldn’t do something to help them.
The mothers love it. They absolutely feel that they’re doing the right thing like I do myself. I don’t have to convince the mother. There’s nothing they want better – or a father, I should say – there’s nothing they like better than taking care of their child young and not let things get out of hand.
This is so effortless. Such an easy way to treat somebody. You have nothing to lose actually. As far as my time is concerned, there is very little time or effort put into it.
As far as the TMJ is concerned, in fact that’s probably one of my biggest selling points to a parent because today almost every parent that sits down, you mention TMJ and they tell you they got a little bit of it themselves. They are very familiar with it. There’s nothing nicer than letting that lower jaw develop a little bit forward, especially in some of these deep bite cases. Instead of letting them sit and wait until they’re 12 or 13 years old, with the mandible being held in a back position all this time, releasing it and let it develop forward. What better could you do for the TMJ. I can’t stress enough when they grow into the bite, it’s comfortable, it’s theirs, and there’s only one bite. I see no dual bites there.”
~ Dr. Adrian J. Costanza, Orthodontist, Danvers, MA
“I ran into a lot of the kids and in pure deciduous dentitions – five and six year olds that had, I mean, problems there was no doubt about – the deep bites, the kids with the crowded problems, the kids with the open bites from thumbs and things like that – and I didn’t have anything to treat them with and Mom wanted them treated, so I had to find a way to treat them. When the Nite-Guide came along, it gave me some answers, some – at least a handle to go with to find a way to treat these kids.
I think that treating early gives me the feeling that I am doing something for that child and it’s positive. And I can see it, there’s no doubt about it. That helps in the practice. It helps with the personnel, because they see it too. And of course the parents see it. They’ll wear it – they’ll do whatever you ask them to do. It’s amazing. So that the compliance thing is something I didn’t know about until I started using it and then that just came on it’s own.
It’s increased the patient load. There’s no doubt about that. Doubled the size of our practice.”
~ Dr. Robert R. Schmisseur, Orthodontist, Champaign, IL
“I think it makes an awful lot of sense that you can intercept crowding as you see it develop – line the teeth up and by expanding the jaw and the bony support of the teeth, I think that’s a very desirable end. Straightening and aligning the teeth prior to the period of eight years of age is ingenious. It’s very, very clever. Nobody wants permanent retention and nobody wants to wear a retainer forever.
The earlier you align the teeth, the earlier they are in position that is correct, the less retentive problems you’ll have.
Many people, in my opinion, most particularly mothers, don’t want to extract teeth in their children so that I think there’s a very, very receptive ear in that mother whose child is a perspective extraction case. They like to hear that you’re not going to take teeth out.
I think the faces look fabulous when you treat these cases early as opposed to an extraction case where you may have to retract the dentition more than you like to. The occlusion is better, the stability is there. These non-extraction cases that are treated early seem to have those nice wide, healthy looking smiles.
That’s what early treatment is all about, is preventing the development of this severe malocclusion. It’s intercepting the moderate problem and correcting it. So if you can prevent these problems, I think that makes a lot of sense.”
~ Dr. John O’Connor, Orthodontist, Milton, MA