To correct a bad bite (teeth not fitting together properly) is obviously an elective decision that focuses on how your face looks, your teeth look and how they actually fit together. This affects the quality of life in a child and their social relationships as they mature.
Examples of “Bad Bites” are: Extreme overbites, crowding of teeth, tongue thrusts, lisping, narrow palates, extreme underbites, thumb sucking, missing adult teeth, poor jaw alignment,and mouth breathing to name a few.
Treatment recommended in the United States and abroad may be recommended in one of three ways:
- Appliance Therapy during early childhood while there is a mixture of baby teeth and adult teeth. This type of therapy will provide guidance for remaining adult teeth to come in as well as repositioning the ones that are already in place. Treatment like this must be sought out by a dentist that is properly trained in pre-orthodontic appliance therapy or otherwise know as interceptive orthodontics
- Camouflage Treatment of the “bad bite” which corrects the bite problems usually during the adult stages of life by positioning the teeth to cover up the jaw problems.
- Jaw Surgery (orthognathic surgery) the “bad bite” has become too extreme to treat by acceptable standards and cannot be fixed without surgical procedures