Invisalign and Clear Aligners in Fort Lauderdale

How clear aligner treatment works

Treatment starts with a digital scan of your teeth. From that scan, the movement of each tooth is mapped out across the whole course of treatment, and a series of custom aligners is manufactured to carry out that plan a fraction of a millimeter at a time.

Each aligner is worn about 20 to 22 hours a day and swapped for the next in the series roughly every one to two weeks. They come out to eat and to brush, which is the practical advantage over fixed braces: nothing is off-limits at dinner, and cleaning your teeth stays completely normal.

What aligners treat well

• Crowding — teeth overlapping because there is not enough room in the arch.
• Spacing — gaps between teeth, including a gap between the front two.
• Relapse after braces — very common in adults who stopped wearing a retainer years ago.
• Mild to moderate bite issues — overbite, underbite, crossbite and open bite within a certain range.
• Pre-restorative alignment — moving teeth into better positions before veneers or crowns, so less tooth structure has to be removed.

Severe skeletal bite discrepancies and complex rotations sometimes need fixed appliances or an orthodontic specialist. If your case is one of those, the doctors will tell you at the consultation rather than after you have paid for aligners.

Adults and teens

Most aligner patients here are adults who did not want visible brackets at work, and teenagers who prefer aligners to braces. The requirement is the same for both: the aligners only work while they are actually in your mouth, so honest self-assessment about wear time is part of deciding whether this is the right treatment for you.