Dental orthopedic appliances typically do not work as intended. They can help move teeth around temporarily, which can help with appearance, but have little long-term beneficial effect.

The solution to fixing smiles in the past was usually to extract teeth, wire up the remaining teeth and use the resulting extra space to create beautiful smiles. And the results were exactly that and only that, beautiful smiles. But the smiles lacked “context.” These were smiles that in the process of building up a straight set of pearly aligned pearly whites, left behind destruction to what could have been a strong jaw line, easy breathing, and a well-constructed face.