Opinions…everyone has them.
Just this morning, I put on a green shirt that I thought looked great – but my wife had a different opinion.
I changed to the striped one.
Opinions make us unique and make the world interesting.
Could you imagine how boring it would be if everyone thought the same way? There is hardly a day that goes by without someone asking me about my opinion of Early Treatment.
Many people come into my office in the hopes that I will put braces on their 1st grader - and while some of these cases really need to begin treatment early, MOST do not.
The reality of this is that I am a firm believer in Early Treatment when it is necessary and when there are clear benefits for the patient.
If there are no benefits for starting Early Treatment, I prefer to wait and monitor the patient until the right time to start full treatment.
My opinion is that many of these young kids (young: meaning that they haven’t lost their baby teeth yet) are already in orthodontic treatment, but didn’t necessarily need to be there.
Some orthodontists out there are aggressively treating children with an unnecessary first phase of treatment, causing much more investment for the family, much more time spent in braces for the child, and ending with no better result than what would have been accomplished with a well-timed single phase of treatment.
We live in a society of immediate gratification, but perhaps, for orthodontic care, waiting until the right time might work out best in the end.
