Remember the days of head gear? Well they are over!

In modern orthodontics we now use small micro screws to direct the force on the teeth, instead of the old style head braces. The purpose of the head braces was to use a point of anchorage outside the mouth in order to apply a specific force to the teeth, that could not be done with braces inside the mouth alone. The micro screws are placed using local anaesthetic and are not  usually painful. As they are anchored to the bone they don’t move. So we can apply the same specific force to the teeth, without the use of head gear. In fact they are so prescise, and don’t rely on patient compliances, that the are able to achieve so much more than the old style head braces were.

Their use gives us the ability to negate the need for jaw surgery in many cases that even with head gear, would still have required surgery.

 

When their job is done, they are painlessly unscrewed and the bone and gums heal as if they were never there in the first place.