Wearing period

The wearing time of a brace in lingual technique is not comparable to an external brace, because it always lasts much longer. The reason for this is the more complicated treatment path. The application depends on the individual severity of the situation and position of the teeth and can vary greatly.

In general, a minimum period of application of about one year must be expected, although it can also be considerably longer. Furthermore, it is possible that after completion of the therapy with the lingual technique a subsequent therapy with splints has to be connected in order to achieve the previously planned result. Once the therapy goal has been achieved, a retainer is inserted after removal of all brackets and splints to maintain the position and prevent the teeth from migrating to the original situation.

Lisping

The fact that the individual brackets are attached to the inner surfaces of the teeth in the lingual technique reduces the original size of the tongue and thus limits its space. In many cases, this requires getting used to, as the formation of sound can also change. Affected persons develop lisping at the beginning, but after a short period of acclimatization and some speech exercises, this happens very quickly. If the patient has difficulty getting used to the internal braces, a short logopedic treatment may be necessary, but the desired success is quickly achieved. Pronunciation may be limited for the first 6 – 12 weeks.

Material

Internal braces are available in various materials. They are made to measure, as they are individually adapted to each tooth, unlike the external brackets, which are one size fits all. Common materials are metals like gold or steel alloys.There are also ceramic brackets, which are more expensive.

The individual brackets can nowadays even be manufactured using CAD/CAM software, which allows very fast production. CAD/CAM is a technique that scans the teeth and creates the brackets three-dimensionally on the computer. These brackets are milled from a material using the virtually created model. The wires fixed in the brackets are all made of nickel-titanium alloys and are very biocompatible. Only a few allergy cases are known in literature.