Are Results Perfect? I Have the Impression Teeth Are Still not Perfeclty Aligned After Treatment...

I can certainly relate to your comment. I don't think Invisalign ordered enough trays to correct my teeth. I am now waiting for Refinement trays. If those don't do what I expect, then I am abandoning braces and going for cosmetic reshaping. I am posting my most current pic of my teeth. This picture flatters them more than it actually is. I guess some people above were correct. Invisalign is not so great at moving overjetted front teeth. My front teeth still go over the sides of the others! It did not push them backward so they still slant forward like a hoofed curve. I wanted to push them back and down. Here is the picture. When I finish the Refinement trays I am going to bond, reshape or get veneers to slim and elongate the front ones. I just can not do anymore braces after the refinements. I'm not totally unhappy, it did move my teeth as you can see by my before pics, but leaves a lot to be desired for the cost as of now.

My result was not perfect as I have to redo it. I think Invisalign can be done by a dentist and not require to be an orthodontist so they wont know what the bite should look like and just can go as far as look good in the outside and not focus to really correct bite problems. If you are in a good hands, I believe the result will much better. Since we are normal people without knowing about teeth movements, I dont think coming to a dentist to fix the teeth is a good idea. If you want you can read my posts about my experience with Invisalign. And yes, I've seen people who had completed their treatments and their teeth still not perfect, as I didnt know they did get treatment if I didnt see their retainers.

Not sure if I have a weird scenario, but after a year and a half of trays, my teeth were great. They couldn't fix the bite completely, which is one of the downers of the treatment plan, but I was OK with that at the time. What REALLY bothers me, is that after getting permanent retainers on my top and bottom teeth and wearing a clear retainer every night, my teeth are STILL SHIFTING BACK. My permanent retainers break every month on average and my orthodontist has to reglue or replace it entirely, and she has no idea why this is happening and there is not other way to hold the teeth in place. My eye teeth are turning in...I think the crowding in my mouth might be too much and the plastic retainer simply cannot hold it. Neither can the metal retainers. Bone vs. metal and plastic....bone will win. Either way, I was satisfied when I got them off, but it all shifted back so quickly. 7,500 total in treatment with no insurance in the state of new york, and I'm almost back to square one. One of the most frustrating experiences of my life.

I started invisalign 5 months ago and I am almost done my treatment (should be). I am seeing great results and I totally believe it's worth getting if you have issues with metal braces. HOWEVER, I find it a hassle to have to take them off before I eat, brush my teeth and my ligners all the time. Another downside of invisalign is that, if you need more ligners after your initial treatment, they will need to make new impressions, wait a few weeks to get them and wear them until you are done with it. Personally, I find this method longer than metal braces. They screwed up my second measurements and I am wearing my old liners for over a month now and I am waiting for new ones to come in. This is a huge disappointment to me because they predicted I was going to need this treatment only for 16 weeks while the last liners were not even straight. How can this be? Now I am stuck waiting for them to make new ones and I could have had my treeth straight by now if I got metal braces.

It is too early for me to tell you if Invisalign will make my teeth align perfectly. I am just starting my 4th tray. (You have to change trays about every two weeks.) I did not really see hardly any movement the 1st or 2nd trays and I felt as though they were really sort of training trays before they give you the tighter ones. The 3rd tray was the one where I definately felt soreness in all my teeth because it was tighter. I didn't see very much difference. The 4th tray was even tighter and within a few days I noticed slight movement of my front teeth being actually pushed back, and my one bottom tooth that a veneer was removed from started to move forward, and I felt like I was finally seeing small changes.

After you read my link above, I want to add this advice. Wear your trays! I take mine out only for 1-2 minutes to brush my teeth and then put them right back in. When I thought about spending $6,400 for these little plastic trays...I thought I better make certain I wear it because that's a lot of money to waste. The number one reason for Invisalign not working is patients not wearing the trays 24/7. I remove them to eat, and eat quickly, brush my teeth and put it right back in.

I'm still not happy about the button aligners, but it's too late to change things so I'm wearing the buttons and clear trays at least till the end of the year.

Here's some advice:

Don't just take your trays home in the little provided baggies. Take them out of the baggie, feel for razor sharp edges! My first two trays were not buffed, and I suffered with paper-like cuts all over my tongue and lost a few taste buds! You can ask you Dentist to buff any rough edges.

If the dentist fills in composite in places were teeth were pulled or missing, sometimes the composite put into your Invisalign tray can be too much and you will not be able to close your teeth correctly. So if you feel this bowing effect you must go back to the dentist and ask them to smooth it by removing excess composite and then try on the tray before you leave to make certain it fits. I had to do this twice already. The dentist may give you 2 sets to last a month, and only one of those will fit, till your teeth move...so you may find by the next set that the composite filling in your Invisalign tray is too overfilled and needs adjusting. Ask the dentist and he'll correct this.

When I saw the new "Snap on Smile" I thought it is very similar to Invisalign, and thought Invisalign should offer Clear and White trays too. Then people wearing Invisalign would look like they had perfectly whitened teeth while correcting their teeth. Thank me later for this idea:)))

Plan on brushing your teeth more than 3 times per day, and also brushing your trays. I brush both about 6 times per day. The reason for this is because these trays literally become spit trenches and bacteria forms in there and the trays develop an odor.

I truly am not certain if Invisalign is any better than standard braces? I was at a party this week and saw woman wearing braces and they looked clean and neat. I thought at least people do know what those are on people's teeth. A lot of people look at the Invisalign "button" aligners on my teeth and I can see it on their face that they are thinking "What the heck is stuck on her teeth?" The buttons ruin the idea of Invisalign being Invisible and Invisalign needs to develop a clear aligner composite. This was my only true complaint.

For the tiny inconveniences above, I am still very thankful to be able to afford this treatment of my teeth.

I dream of a Hollywood smile. I need dental implants in the spaces where my dentist removed teeth. I had the hunch that I should get Invisalign first and let my teeth move and then after they align, get the implants. Several Dentist on realself confirmed this.

After Invisalign, if my teeth are not perfectly aligned my dentist can then bond them, or tweek them.

I might go as far as some super white veneers but my dentist says I don't need them. I had also seen a lot of friends with crooked teeth go for the option of shaving existing teeth and doing cosmetic straightening, some looked great, but some looked badly placed or really really fake. I have nice healthy front teeth that were only slightly misaligned. I know I could have chosen the quick cosmetic fix of bonding or veneers, but I choose to save my healthy teeth and try to align them with Invisalign even if it will take 12-18 months. (I'm hoping for 12 months.)

Teeth were so important to me because I had seen generations of my family before me suffer with bad teeth. It was my promise to myself that if I ever got a better salary the first thing I'd do is fix my teeth. (Before this year I never had the money to really fix them. Then I graduated from a College class and got a really good medical job with benefits and felt emotionally triumphant about actually doing it. So yes, I complained about the button aligners but that's a small inconvenience for my vision of beautiful teeth.

I suppose that if Invisalign does not completely straighten my teeth I can then tweek them by shaving and bonding them.

Hope this helps.