A fantastic benefit to choosing Invisalign for your teen's orthodontic treatment is that Invisalign's clear aligners are removable so that patients can take them out to eat, drink, and care for their teeth. Invisalign Teen Compliance Indicators help teens resist the temptation to remove their aligners more often than prescribed.
Your teen will need to wear their Invisalign aligners for a minimum of 22 hours every day in order to keep their orthodontic treatment on track.
Significant setbacks to treatment can result from removing aligners more often, or for longer, than prescribed. If patients don't comply with proper wear, treatment takes much longer than initially scheduled.
That's where Invisalign Teen's Compliance Indicators come in! Compliance indicators make it easier for orthodontists to tell if their patients are following directions and wearing their aligners for the prescribed amount of time each day.
So what exactly are compliance indicators?
Invisalign Teen's compliance indicators are a series of blue dots on the backs of each set of aligners. The dots are not visible to anyone when the aligners are in place. Gradually, over the two week period when the aligners are being worn the blue dots disappear. However, if the patient fails to wear the aligners as prescribed, the blue dots will still be visible to the orthodontist at the end of the two week period.
If, when the teen comes in for checkups, the orthodontist repeatedly sees the blue dots it's evident that the patient is not following directions. The orthodontist then has the opportunity to remind the patient and their parents why wearing the aligners as recommended is important for keeping treatment on track. If the teen continues to struggle to comply with proper wear the orthodontist may discuss different orthodontic treatment options, such as traditional metal braces.
Another benefit of Invisalign's compliance indicators is that they can be helpful in indicating to the orthodontist whether the treatment is effective. If the compliance indicators show that a patient has in fact been wearing the aligners as prescribed, yet the anticipated tooth movement is not taking place, adjustments can be made to the treatment plan.
Compliance indicators can also help the patient to stay on track with treatment. Since each set of aligners has been calibrated to achieve a certain degree of tooth movement during its stage of wear, changing to a new aligner too soon, or leaving a given set in for too long, can negatively affect the treatment process.
For patients who take their aligners out more often than they should, or for longer periods of time than they should, it's easy to lose track of when the aligners should be replaced by the next set. Since the compliance indicators will only fade after being worn for a full two weeks, patients can easily get their treatment back on track.
