Preventive medicine is an approach that is actively developing in all clinical fields, including dentistry and orthodontics. Recently, Orthodontic Practice Media published an opinion of the Finnish professor Emeritus Juha Varrela – a specialist with more than 40 years of clinical experience in these fields. He described one of Finland's most popular approaches to the early treatment of malocclusions – eruption guidance appliance (EGA). This elastic removable silicon tool should be placed on teeth, like a boxer's kapa, during the night to fix particular occlusion problems.
In this short report, we'll review the professor's opinion regarding the effectiveness of this instrument.
Health benefits
The best age for starting that treatment is about six years old at the beginning of the early mixed dentition before the upper front teeth erupt. Juha Varrela characterizes this period as the most favorable for occlusal fixing due to the physiological flexibility of the occlusion. Treatment in later development stages is more complicated and requires much more time to fix the problem entirely. This approach took about 2-3 years, followed by a retention phase, aiming to maintain clinical results until jaw and teeth adaptation and prevent possible malocclusion returning.
EGA is supported by various studies revealing its effectiveness in the case of malocclusions with Class II or Class II tendencies, crowding, anterior cross-bite, excess overjet, and deep bite. According to the study results, this treatment can decrease overbite from 3.2 to 2.0 mm in 3 years and overjet from 3 to 1.9 mm in the same period.
It's important to know that neglecting treatment usually aggravates the malocclusions, increasing the gap distance, which is much more complicated to fix.
Economical benefits
Early EGA treatment is beneficial not only for the child's health but also for saving you a lot of money – the earlier you start malocclusions, the faster you can complete it. The most money-consuming factor, in that case – is the number of dental visits, which you can cut if you start solving your problem in time.
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