LAKEVILLE, SAVAGE AND BURNSVILLE, MINNESOTA – Lakeville and Burnsville, MN Orthodontist Dr. Jennifer Eisenhuth gets frustrated when sees a teenage patient for an initial evaluation and discovers they will need surgery to correct what she could have treated without surgery in early childhood.

Improvements throughout the years in orthodontic treatment have changed the way many orthodontists approach alignment issues, and have made it possible to correct many problems through early treatment. Early treatment often eliminates the need for surgery and reduces future orthodontic treatment time.

Eisenhuth follows American Association of Orthodontics guidelines regarding initial consultations, and recommends that parents have their children evaluated at Cosmopolitan Orthodontics, her Lakeville and Burnsville, MN orthodontics office, by the time they reach age 7, she said.

Eisenhuth opened Cosmopolitan Orthodontics in 2009. Lakeville, Savage and Burnsville, MN braces expert Dr. Trudy Bonvino is the orthodontist on staff there.

The AAO recommends that parents take their children for their first orthodontic examination by age 7 because by the time they reach this age, most children have a mixture of baby and adult teeth, which enables an orthodontist to identify several common orthodontic problems, according to the AAO.

“An orthodontist can identify jaw growth and tooth eruption issues even when some baby teeth have not fallen out,” said Eisenhuth, a Burnsville, MN invisible braces provider. “In many cases, it’s easier to correct problems such as these when they are detected and treated at a young age because the orthodontist can use the fact that the child hasn’t finished growing to their advantage.”

One early intervention device that Eisenhuth and Bonvino use is the Carriere Distilizer, made by Class One Orthodontics. They use it to prevent permanent tooth extraction in patients when they’re older because it corrects overjet, which is a condition created by a patient’s bite being a full tooth ahead.

“This device is an ideal way to address overjet before a patient gets braces,” Eisenhuth said. “It takes about four months for the device to do its job, and it can decrease the time the patient is in braces. It also can completely take them out of the tooth extraction category.”

Before the Carriere Distilizer, the common treatment method was to extract permanent teeth. In some cases, a patient may have more teeth than their jaws can support and extraction actually is beneficial to the long-term orthodontic results.

Other examples of early treatment include palate widening and tooth spacing procedures, which help to accommodate adult teeth as they erupt.

“When a parent waits to seek orthodontic treatment until all of their child’s permanent teeth have erupted, correcting some malocclusions can be difficult without extractions or orthognathic surgery,” said the Burnsville, MN Invisalign provider.

Patients who are past their growth spurts often don’t have many non-surgical correction options.

“It all goes back to interceptive treatment,” she said. “It is quite rewarding when in extreme cases, we can actually prevent surgery.”

The priority is to maintain and preserve all of the permanent teeth, provided doing so doesn’t negatively impact the patient’s profile.

Permanent tooth extraction can have long-term consequences that don’t appear until well into adulthood. Eisenhuth cited the work of orthodontist Dr. David Sarver as proof.

Sarver spent several years researching whether tooth extraction could affect a patient’s lips and profile as they aged. The lips become thinner with age, and removing permanent teeth creates slight changes in the way a patient’s lips are supported, Sarver learned. It moves the lips inward ever so slightly and decreases the level of support for the lips. Less support of this soft tissue can result in a person’s smile actually making the person look older at a younger age because the foundation of the soft tissue has been altered.

“Your orthodontist does have an impact on your profile,” Eisenhuth said. “That is one of the reasons we strive to spread the message that we are an advanced office that uses advanced, proven techniques that create a beautiful smile now and preserve it for years to come.”

Cosmopolitan Orthodontics has two locations: 17757 Juniper Path in Lakeville, and 8310 C.R. 42 in Savage.

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Author Bio: If you would like to learn more about one of the Burnsville orthodontists at Cosmopolitan Orthodontics, or Burnsville orthodontics or Burnsville braces please call (952) 469-3333.

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