Invisible Orthodontics: The Danger of “Buying Health” Online

• “Yes, of course! The girl in the photo has a very beautiful smile with those invisible braces”.
• “Yes, of course! The girl who does the “promo” on Instagram has thousands of followers and says that her smile is thanks to wearing for six months those “invisible braces” that she bought online.
• Yes, of course! It really does seem to be good, nice and cheap, and on top of that you’re going to get it straight away.

Definitely: Run away now while you still have time! Your teeth, your health and your pocket will end up thanking you for it.

Why shouldn’t you buy your dental aligners online?

If we have to undergo any medical treatment we never hesitate and go to a private clinic, hospital or health centre we trust.

You’d never think of buying a treatment for your back pain or for your short-sightedness through social media or online. The same should happen in the case of needing to start an orthodontic treatment: the most advisable thing is for an orthodontics specialist dentist with enough medical experience to check you over so that they can advise you on what type of treatment is the most suitable for you.

It’s well proven that clear aligners are effective at achieving a perfect smile, but the dental aligners don’t work alone. It’s the dentist who has to explain to the technician who makes them what movements they want for each of their patients and at what moment. So it’s the dentist who directs the invisible orthodontic treatment.

Why aren’t all invisible aligners the same?

In the last year, numerous commercial brands have emerged that sell invisible dental aligners even through Facebook or Instagram. Many of them can seem attractive because they offer an apparently low price and a quick treatment, but nothing could be further from the truth. If we read the small print, in many cases they sell us treatments of 6 months, so it’s impossible to correct a malocclusion or achieve a beautiful smile in that short period of time. That’s why after that time, if we want to continue with the treatment, they’ll charge us more money, making our orthodontic treatment end up being more expensive than at a dental clinic.

In addition to the financial side, the invisible aligners they sell are only supervised initially by a doctor who isn’t going to see you on any day. It will be you who has to change the aligners in most of the invisible orthodontics they sell online, with the risk that this involves and which we’ll tell you about later.

An orthodontic treatment needs a good clinical diagnosis and the planning of it and, as with fixed appliances with braces, in many of our patients with invisible aligners it will be necessary to use elastics (bands that go from the upper part to the lower part to improve the bite), do stripping (reduce the teeth interproximally) or even carry out extractions if we have a great lack of space. So the treatment must be checked periodically by our dentist so that they can see that the patient is progressing satisfactorily.

The consequences of buying invisible aligners online:

As we’ve explained above, invisible orthodontics sold online carries some risks. We’re already seeing patients at our dental clinic who come with problems arising from being treated with that type of invisible orthodontics.

As they haven’t been checked by any dentist, it’s common to see problems that the patient themselves is able to identify and that’s why they ask for a second opinion:

• Smiles they’re not happy with, not in line with what they’d been told on the first day.
• Teeth that don’t quite align because they don’t fit, or spaces that can’t be closed.
• Bites that don’t fit together.

These are some examples of reasons for consultation of patients who aren’t satisfied with their orthodontic treatment bought online. In addition, in some cases more serious problems can occur:

• Movement of teeth from not having planned the case well, possibly even ending up losing the teeth.
• Headaches or neck pain caused by problems in the temporomandibular joint from not leaving a correct bite, leaving us with interferences in the teeth.
• Tooth sensitivity, sores… that can arise throughout the treatment and that need to be checked periodically to be able to solve them for the patient as quickly as possible.

How should a proper treatment with dental aligners be done?

As we’ve explained at the beginning of the post: any medical treatment must be carried out by a qualified and registered person, in this case by the College of Dentists. That way we make sure that the dentist who is going to carry out the orthodontic treatment has the knowledge needed to be able to make a proper diagnosis of our occlusion and advise us on the most suitable invisible orthodontic treatment for us.

Before starting our treatment with invisible aligners they should explain the study of our case to us, that is, what they’re going to do to us, how long the treatment is going to last and how our case can look if we do everything they advise us during it.

During our invisible orthodontic treatment the doctor should see the dental aligners to check that they’re working properly and at some appointments they’ll have to carry out a procedure such as placing elastics or doing stripping, planned initially and which they should have explained to us on the day of the study.

At our dental clinic in Valencia we work with the two most cutting-edge commercial brands in aligners: Invisalign orthodontics and Spark orthodontics. With both it’s necessary for our orthodontics specialist dentist to assess us and recommend the most suitable treatment for us.

We want to be your trusted dental clinic in Valencia with more than 10 years of experience and the best specialists working with us; our patients and their reviews back us up. Don’t hesitate to call us and book an appointment so that we can assess you free of charge.