Why You Should Avoid Mail Order Aligners
Getting your smile straightened is something that involves a great deal of delicate work. You wouldn’t trust someone with no degree to conduct any form of surgery on you or a loved one—and you shouldn’t do that with your smile.
Invisalign alternatives, such as Smile Direct Club and Candid offer their own plastic aligners with the promise that they will straighten your teeth. However, they do so without the education and years of experience an orthodontic professional has.
Mail order aligners have been showing up more frequently in recent years, offering a seemingly more affordable option for straightening teeth. These may seem like a great option at first because they advertise that they’re not only less expensive than other brands, but they also don’t come with regular, inconvenient orthodontic appointments.
These companies claim that all you have to do is go to a local center or use an at-home kit to take an impression of your teeth, send those impressions in, and then you’ll receive your clear aligners if you are deemed a viable candidate.
Doing all the important set up of taking impressions and creating a straightening plan without the proper guidance from a professional could end up damaging your mouth and teeth more than helping it! Take a look at some of the main reasons you should avoid mail order aligners below.
Patients Don’t Have Access to a Licensed Professional
Teeth straightening can be a complicated process. You need to work with a professional dentist to get professional-looking results. Having regular consultations with your Invisalign dentist or orthodontist isn’t meant to be annoying—it’s meant to keep you safe and healthy.
Without this educated presence during your treatment, you’re left to make the calls yourself. This can hurt your smile a lot if you can’t tell if things are going wrong, if your trays aren’t quite right, or if your teeth are moving a way they shouldn’t.
Treatment Is Not Patient-Specific
Everyone is unique and each individual is going to have different needs than the next. That’s why mail-ordered aligners are a bad idea; you won’t receive any unique, customized treatment that would otherwise be top priority of your Invisalign dentist here at Compassionate Dental Care.
While your mail-order aligners may say that the process will be supervised by their own dentist at the lab, you’ll likely never meet this doctor in person throughout your treatment. This means no personal care from an orthodontist who will be able to know your smile and make necessary changes as you progress.
When you choose the Invisalign system at Compassionate Dental Care instead, our skilled dentist, Dr. Stirneman, personally works with each patient to study your progression. He closely monitors your shifting teeth to make sure things are progressing safely and properly.
Treatment Options Are Limited
These companies claim that you will be turned away from their mail-order aligner treatment if you don’t meet qualifications. That implies that some sort of checking process is in place for the initial signup, which is good.
However, situations can change and problems often arise during your treatment—after you’ve been approved—that couldn’t have been foreseen in the first place.
So you could be initially approved for treatment, but then something comes up that causes some serious problems: such as unknown gum disease, or the problem of your teeth being crooked actually lying in the fact that your jaw is too narrow.
These and other situations can’t and won’t be handled by mail-order aligner companies. You’ll be on your own. Whereas with an orthodontist keeping track of your treatment, these and other issues will be quickly recognized and managed.
Could Ultimately Cost More
These cheap Invisalign alternatives might seem very appealing in the moment, but consider all the damage that could occur without professional supervision. From the very first step, you might not take perfectly accurate impressions of your own teeth, and your whole treatment could be set up wrong.
Not to mention the scenarios in which your teeth might need a mid-treatment adjustment, and you could be left alone to deal with some serious repercussions. The longer you go without getting these problems created, the more work you would need to fix your smile.
And who do you turn to to have those types of issues corrected? A professional orthodontist—who you should have been seeing the whole time. The amount of work needed to correct your teeth could easily outstrip the money you might have saved with the mail-order aligners.
Companies Are Not Up-to-Date on Latest Techniques
The world of dentistry and orthodontics is always changing. Research is being conducted, tests run, new treatments made possible through technological advances—and our office at Compassionate Dental Care is always updating to keep up with these changes.
Since these companies who offer the mail order aligners are not often run by professional dentists, you can’t get that same kind of guarantee from your teeth straightening treatment.
Contact us at Compassionate Dental Care to Get the Most Out of Your Invisalign Treatment
Mail-order aligners are a risky business that isn’t guaranteed to get you the results you want. Don’t settle for less. Get in touch with our team at Compassionate Dental Care today!
We’re here to answer your questions about Invisalign aligners and to help you to have your best, brightest, and straightest smile yet. And we’ll do it all the right way, with your oral and overall health in mind.
