Getting Cavities Filled While Wearing Invisalign

The dentist can use the aligner as a guide while he is putting in the new fillings and he shouldnt charge you for new aligners to do so...

Well that really sucks. Sorry to hear that. Getting cavities can be upsetting. First off make sure you are cleaning your trays properly and brushing after each meal before you replace your trays. Only drink water with your trays in your mouth or these cavities may just be the beginning.

It may also be a great idea to do fluoride rinse before you go to bed at night after you brush.

All that said call you ortho office. Depending on your treatment, there may not be a charge to replace your trays this once. Ask you dentist if the fillings can wait. I would do all of the above and she your dentist every 3mos to watch them and make sure they don't get worse-if you can- and be very good at wearing your trays so you finish on time.

If you get new trays, make sure you dentist does a full evaluations and says there are NO OTHER areas he is "watching". Getting capacities in that short of time is not normal. Something must be going on, discuss this with him too.

The size and location of the fillings are two factors that may affect aligner fitment. If the fillings only cover a small portion of the chewing surface of your back teeth, it may not be an issue. If you have several teeth to be filled, my advice is to have your dentist fill one tooth at a time and check aligner fit before filling the next tooth. In my office I always try to fill cavities during invisalign right before refinement.  In my office we do not charge for refinement so it is never a concern of the patient whether to have them done or not. 

The size and location of the fillings are two factors that may affect aligner fitment.  If the fillings only cover a small portion of the chewing surface of your back teeth, it may not be an issue.  If you have several teeth to be filled, my advice is to have your dentist fill one tooth at a time and check aligner fit before filling the next tooth.  

Talk to your dentist to see how deep these cavities are.  There may be a way to pospone these fillings until your invisalign active care is complete using good home care and one of the remineralization/fluoride products.  Then, if needed, new impressions could be made after your fillings to create retainers to hold the teeth in their new positions ( You might even  need to create some refinement aligners at this point which would require new impressions anyway). 

There is also a midcourse correction provision Invisalign has for changes in the middle of care where new impressions are needed, and you are not charged for this. 

If there are only few small fillings, they could be completed carefully, then proceed to completion on current aligners and then have some impressions and create some refinement aligners at the end if things are not just right.  This also generally does not cost anything.

It is possible that getting fillings may affect your Invisalign treatment in a couple of ways.

The first is that the filling may be overfilled and therefore affect the fit of your aligner.  This would be like an improperly fitting attachment.

The other possibility is that the tooth is underfilled and a key surface that is required for the aligner to push against is no longer present.  In this case, the movement will not occur as planned.

Bring your aligners to your filling visit and have the dentist try to fill the tooth to match the original shape as much as possible.