I'm Wearing Modified Retainers After Invisilign to Fix my Bite. Is This Normal?

I got invisilign to fix two teeth in the front that were crooked. I had a good bite and just needed some minor improvements. I used 8 aligners for the top and 13 for the bottom. Now I'm wearing modified retainers to fix my bite. The last 4 molars have been sculpted out of the retainer. Basically, only the front 6 teeth are being held in place. Is this normal? I'm very nervous about my bite!

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3 Doctor Answers | Asked by CarolineRP in Orlando, FL

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Modified retainers are normal

Nearly all retainers are customized or modified to fit each person and their needs. It is not unusual to have a retainer not touch posterior teeth, and often the goal is to allow these teeth to move on their own to touch again, allowing much less stress to the front teeth when completed.

Retainer after Invisalign

It sounds like what your doctor is doing is holding the teeth that I presume were satisfactorily corrected with your aligners while they let the back teeth "settle in to place". Settling is a phenomenon where molars that are not quite touching each other when you bite, are allowed to move towards each other until they achieve contact. In other words, the retainer may be made to ALLOW this to happen rather than to MAKE it happen. When... more

Correcting the bite after invisalign treatment.

The one downside of Invisalign aligners is that they have a certain thickness. Our jaw function on a pivot which is the jaw joint. As a result there is more "thickness" in the back, where the molars are, and as a result sometimes wearing the aligners causes the back teeth to get pushed in or intrude. To correct this we sometimes take away the thickness of the aligners in the back of the mouth there by allowing the teeth to settle into the normal bite. Hope... more