Although a company website listed scientific references for their marketing claims, a letter published in the British Dental Journal points out that “none of them directly supports the stated and implied claims made that Fastbraces are new, faster, move the teeth in a different way to ‘old’ braces, are less likely to need extractions, and require only 15 minutes of retention per day. It is full of pseudoscience.”
A major criticism of Fastbraces is that most providers are general dentists who have had two to three years of extra training to specialize in tooth movement, bite correction, and jaw alignment, not orthodontists.
“Fastbraces is a method general dentists use to align only the top front teeth [the so-called social six], without concern for the bite as a whole,” says Kennesaw, Georgia, orthodontist Dr. Doug Depew. “As a result, treatment time is more limited, and so is the result and your satisfaction with it.”
Phoenix orthodontist Dr. Clark Jones says in a RealSelf Q&A that such fast orthodontic treatments are simply incomplete treatments that don’t address underlying issues.
“They’re akin to what the orthodontist refers to as ‘initial alignment,’ which is what orthodontists usually do first, before trying to make the bite corrections to make the teeth fit each other properly. When you begin to move any of the teeth, the bite will usually change—and now you have to fit all the teeth back together again in a different way to get them to fit properly and work properly, upper to lower. I can often get great initial alignment in three months and then spend another 12–18 months trying to get everything to fit together and work really well. That’s the hard part.”
Another knock is that unlike with conventional orthodontics or clear aligner treatment, there are no studies available to the dental community to assess and learn more about the efficacy of Fastbraces treatment, says Dr. Davidowitz. “In fact, very little information is released to the dental community. One can only learn more by paying tuition for two-day Fastbraces training.”
If you go with this option, “be sure to see a qualified orthodontist, not a general dentist who dabbles in orthodontia,” Dr. Depew advises.
