Orthodontics & Micro Implants

Microimplants are temporary anchorage devices (TAD's) that looks like a fancy miniature version of a screw.

A common example of orthodontic anchorage (relatively immobile blocks of teeth) is the situation when the orthodontist wants to pull in your front teeth that are sticking out. He uses the back molar teeth to help him because they are large, multirooted, and move very little when they are used to pull back the front teeth. The molar teeth are well anchored in your jaw.

What if the patient has no back teeth? Solution...the orthodontist places two microimplants, one on each side of the jaw toward the back where the molars used to be and attaches rubber bands to the front teeth he wants to move back.

The screw is about the about half the size of the width of your thumbnail, and no wider than the width of the head of a pin. It looks like this: @--- . It is generally made of Titanium steel, and is placed painlessly either with a mini-"screwdriver" or a mini-ratchet wrench following the painless creation of "starter" hole in the bone.

The microimplant screw is removed when orthodontic treatment is completed. It takes less than a minute to remove it, and causes no pain.  

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Micro Implants