What Are Clear Aligners?
Clear aligner treatment involves the use of semi-transparent plastic aligner trays that fit over your teeth and are removable.
There are some obvious reasons why people are attracted to clear aligners. That aligners are clear, less noticeable, make it easier to keep your teeth clean and to floss, and require fewer eating restrictions are the main attractions.
How Aligners Work
These aligners are custom-made in a series created for each individual patient. All of the tooth movement to align the teeth and improve the bite is planned out in a complex software system. The software allows the orthodontist to create a 3D virtual reality digital plan that can be played like a movie from start to finish.
The aligners are then fabricated/manufactured for the patient. As patients progress through the series of aligners, the teeth are moved in small steps.
Each aligner is worn for a prescribed number of days. Typical intervals may be 7, 10, 12, or 14 days per aligner set. Aligners are generally worn for about 22 hours per day in order to move teeth effectively.
Why Choose
Dr. Matthew?
Dr. McNutt was first certified to treat patients with Invisalign during residency in 2005. Since then, he has steadily grown his ability to use clear aligners as the technology has progressively improved over time and more protocols have become available for treatment.
Clear Aligner Expert
Every two years Invisalign has an open competition for all orthodontists in North America for best clinical treatment outcomes and they award only four orthodontists in all of North America.
To be considered for this award, an orthodontist must submit their clinical work for evaluation, which is then peer reviewed blindly by other orthodontists based on measures of case difficulty, treatment planning and execution, diagnostic records, and treatment results.
In 2016, Dr. McNutt decided to compete and submitted numerous completed cases for evaluation and was awarded the highest clinical outcomes award for teens treated with the Invisalign system.
Dr. McNutt was then invited to present one of his treated cases to a crowd of over 4,000 people filled with orthodontists and their team members.
Clear Aligner Systems at
McNutt Orthodontics
The use of clear aligner therapy (CAT) — such as Invisalign©, Spark©, or uLab© — has increased rapidly since clear aligner therapy became available to orthodontists just shortly before the year 2000.
After mastering these systems, the McNutt Ortho team began developing and fabricating their own clear aligners in-house, and we only occasionally outsource them to a large aligner company.
Our in-house 3D printer system ensures that we can oversee complete quality control of your custom-made aligners. Dr. McNutt utilizes sophisticated software to map out your entire treatment journey. You can visualize every step of your tooth alignment process in 3D digital reality.
Our personalized approach helps you gradually and gently move your teeth. Get ready to smile!
Who Is a Good Candidate for Clear Aligners?
When we do use clear aligners to fully treat a patient, we limit ourselves to cases that we are confident will likely respond well and give us a good treatment outcome. There are even cases where the doctor may actually see an advantage to using clear aligners over braces.
Despite the advertisements that you might see on television or online, clear aligners have limitations and are not able to correct all problems.
Not every patient will be a good candidate, and success with clear aligners is greatly influenced by the patient’s willingness to participate actively during treatment (even more so than with braces).
Excellent research studies show that for every five teens that are treated with clear aligners, at least one in five end up switching to braces because they cannot handle the responsibility.
Patients must be willing to:
- Commit to wearing aligners 22 hours daily.
- Not skip any days.
- Have what are called “attachments” bonded to their teeth in order to allow the aligners to have proper grip.
- Self-monitor the fit of the aligners and attachments every day.
- Self-adjust and increase the number of days each aligner set is worn if the teeth are moving slower than predicted.
We have a more in-depth instruction form that we provide in our office to all patients who are considering clear aligners. Review it yourself.
At McNutt Orthodontics, we use clear aligners at various stages in your smile journey. In fact, the uLab system has allowed us to harness the power of 3D printing in our office, so we have total control over the software system to design the digital tooth movement treatment plans, and we fabricate our own aligners right here in our in-house lab.
This has been a tremendous game-changer, and we are able to provide treatment in new ways that greatly benefit our patients at a lower cost.
For example, we have patients who will have most of their treatment completed with braces, and then we remove braces and use clear aligners to finish the fine details. This also is a great option to do minor re-alignment of teeth that may have shifted a little (like when a patient may have not worn their retainers as much as we recommended).
