Aligner Dental Academy shares its top five tips for successful treatment outcomes when working with Invisalign orthodontics.
Mentorship plays a vital role in professional advancement across various sectors, dentistry included. Defined as a supportive, motivational connection aimed at unlocking a mentee’s potential (Varney 2012), mentorship holds significant importance in all industries.
This article highlights the crucial role of mentorship in dentistry and emphasises how Aligner Dental Academy acts as a pivotal ally for dentists striving to enhance their Aligner business and knowledge.
Drawing from over 100,000 forum posts from our members, we have also distilled our key insights into the top five essential aligner tips for successful treatment outcomes.
Who are we?
The Aligner Dental Academy is the official training partner for Invisalign dentists across Europe and the Middle East. In addition to this we are one of the biggest aligner education-based platforms presently.
ADA members on average complete 81% more aligner cases than non-ADA members. By joining ADA you will be part of a community of peers and experienced mentors, giving you constant access to support and guidance to ensure clinical excellence with every patient you treat.
How we do it?
The ADA forum
All ADA members can access our support forum for clinical guidance on any case related query they have. We provide a response time within 24-48 hours from our faculty of experienced orthodontists and dentists specialising in Invisalign. We handle 15,000 plus annual posts and span 16 plus countries globally.
Case Café
ADA’s Case Café is a one-to-one consultation service with a clinical mentor. Dentists can book this service through our platform allowing for personalised advice on case suitability, ClinCheck, treatment planning, troubleshooting and case finishing.
Treatment planning services
ADA’s treatment planning service is designed to optimise your ClinCheck and return it to you ready to approve. This service will save time and increase your clinical confidence.
Continuing professional development plays an integral role in dentistry and is a requirement set by the General Dental Council. Online learning allows for self-directed and self-paced learning, accommodating the busy schedules of general dentists. On our platform we offer an array of self-paced e-learning modules, live webinars and events.
This includes a hands-on skills lab designed to provide GDPs hands-on experience on attachment placement and removal, IPR, using auxiliaries, placing a bonded retainer and much more.
Clinical resources, ebooks and videos
Our members can benefit from a wealth of clinical resources including consent forms, case assessment protocols, ClinCheck review forms and IPR guides.
In addition to the education and support, ADA want to provide GDPs with all they need to excel in their journey with aligners. As such we provide our members with the essential materials and products they require to start their journey on our ADA Marketplace.
Through helping our dentists through thousands of cases, we have put together a top five essential aligner tips for you to apply to your next case.
1. Case selection
Selecting the right case suitable to your patient’s treatment goals is key to the first step in your Invisalign treatment planning. Always assess your cases against the product parameters to ensure your goals are achievable.
Use our Case Selection Guide if you are a GO provider. This will provide you a full proof checklist to select your cases by.
2. Plan the safe way
If there is no assessment, then there is no treatment plan! There needs to be a method that is reproducible that shows the thought process of how you reach your treatment goals.
The SAFE assessment, available on ADA, utilises the sequence to assess aesthetics, function, structure and then biology. It utilises the face to determine where the teeth, gingiva and papillae should be positioned and then creating the rest of the treatment plan around the facially driven tooth.
3. ClinCheck planning
ClinCheck is the one of the most revolutionary treatment planning tools available for ortho restorative cases. However, it can be a challenging platform to navigate. We here at ADA recognising this have put together a simple five-step ClinCheck review process. This ensures dentists cover all bases when looking at their cases (available to download to ADA members).
Top tip – Always ensure to use the Smile Visualisation Tool when planning your final smile to consider all extra-oral features.
4. IPR
Interproximal reduction (IPR) can feel like one of the most challenging and awkward process when you are first starting out in your aligner journey. One of the most essential lessons is to plan your IPR carefully in your ClinCheck.
Top tip – If the contacts are very displaced you may want to wait for access to be easier before performing IPR. This will help maintain the anatomy of the interproximal area.
Under perform rather than over perform IPR – you can always perform a little more IPR if contacts become very tight. If the ClinCheck outlines 0.5mm needed and you only perform 0.3mm on the day, it’s okay to come back in a couple of weeks and perform the final 0.2mm. IPR can also be time consuming when you are first starting so spreading out over two appointments can help!
5. Attachments
Attachments are a critical component in improving predictability for your Invisalign cases. Planning and placing them is therefore a critical step prior to treatment starting.
Top tip – If an optimised attachment has been placed, in general you do not need to change it. However, if you note any large movements taking place and no attachments have been planned on the tooth, always consider adding a conventional attachment. For example, vertical conventional attachments can assist with tipping or rotational movements. Horizontal conventional attachments can assist with extrusion movements.
We hope this brief guide provides you with some helpful tips to improve your treatment outcomes. The documents cited above can all be downloaded from the ADA platform. Take the next step in your career by becoming an ADA member today. Your journey towards excellence starts here, and ADA will support you every step of the way.
For more information, visit alignerdentalacademy.com/membership.
