When parents hear about DentalMonitoring, most of them picture clear aligners. That makes sense, because aligners come as a series of trays, and a weekly scan fits that rhythm. But a lot of the kids we treat are in braces, and their parents usually ask me the same thing next. How does a scan from home help a child with brackets and wires?
Braces on DentalMonitoring work differently from braces on a traditional schedule, and the difference comes down to timing. On a traditional schedule, your child comes in every four to six weeks because the calendar says so. With DentalMonitoring, your child comes in when the braces are ready for the next step.
If you’re new to how DentalMonitoring works, the short version is that your child scans at home once a week and I review every scan myself. In this post, I’ll walk you through what that weekly scan means for a child in braces. I’ll also cover the phase some kids go through before they get braces. If you’re still deciding on treatment, this should give you a clear picture of what braces on DentalMonitoring would look like for your family.
What a wire is doing between visits
We use Damon Ultima, a system of self-ligating braces. That simply means each bracket has a small built-in door that holds the wire, so the wire doesn’t depend on elastic ties to stay in place.
Every wire has a job, and that’s the basic idea behind how braces work. The brackets hold the wire against the teeth, and the wire gradually guides those teeth toward where the treatment plan says they should be. Early wires are light and flexible, so they can gently start lining up crooked teeth. Later wires are firmer, which gives me finer control as the smile comes together.
Once a wire has finished its job, it stops pushing. Orthodontists call that a passive wire. At that point, your child is ready for the next step, which is usually a new wire or an adjustment. Until then, I have nothing to change.
Here’s the catch with a traditional schedule. Teeth don’t move on a calendar. One child’s wire might go passive quickly, and another child’s might take much longer. A visit on a fixed interval checks on the wire whether it’s done or not. Some visits come too early to change anything, and some come later than they need to.
How I know a wire has finished its work
Each time your child has an in-office visit, our team sets a goal for the current wire inside DentalMonitoring. The goal is simple: let us know when this wire has done its job.
From there, the weekly scan does the watching. Your child slides a phone into the ScanBox, a small holder that keeps the phone at the right angle. Then the app walks them through the scan in about a minute. The scan uploads on its own, and the DentalMonitoring software compares it to earlier scans to track how each tooth is moving. When the teeth stop changing from one week to the next, that’s the sign the wire has gone passive.
When the scans show the wire has gone passive, the system alerts our office. The software doesn’t make the final call, though. It works as a screening layer that flags what I should look at, and the clinical decisions are mine. For braces, the most important one is deciding whether a wire is truly done and what comes next. I make that judgment each week when I review your child’s weekly scan. Once I’ve made the call, our team schedules the next visit, rather than going by a date we picked months ago.
When a wire finishes early, and when it’s slow
If your child’s teeth respond quickly, the wire can finish its job ahead of schedule. On a traditional schedule, that wire would sit in place doing nothing until the next appointment came around. With DentalMonitoring, the alert comes as soon as the scans show it’s ready, and we bring your child in to make the change. Treatment keeps moving instead of waiting on the calendar.
If the teeth are moving more slowly than expected, that shows up too. Each wire goal has a time limit, and if the wire hasn’t gone passive by then, I’m notified. Slow movement usually means one of two things. Sometimes a tooth needs more time. Other times something mechanical is in the way, like a bracket that has shifted. Because I can see the scans, I can usually tell which it is before deciding whether your child needs to come in.
This is where the visit savings come from. While yes, your child still has in-office visits, each one happens because there’s something to do. The routine visits that only confirm everything looks fine drop out of the schedule. On average, DentalMonitoring cuts in-office visits by about half. Over a full course of braces, that adds up to a noticeably lighter treatment calendar with DentalMonitoring.
Who tells you what happens next
One detail parents tend to appreciate is that the alert goes to our office, not to your child’s phone. We set it up that way on purpose. A notification that says a goal was reached doesn’t tell your family what to do, and it can raise more questions than it answers. Instead, a person on our team reaches out with the next step, whether that’s scheduling a visit or letting you know to keep going.
The same goes for problems the scan picks up between visits. If a bracket comes loose or a wire starts poking, the scan often shows it before your child mentions it. We’ll send you a message with the scan image marked up, so you can see exactly what we’re looking at.
What we do next depends on how your child feels. If they’re uncomfortable, we get them in right away. If they aren’t, the fix can often wait for the next planned visit, unless you’d rather come in sooner. Many loose brackets start with sticky or hard foods, which is why we spend real time on what to eat with braces on day one.
Correcting the bite before braces go on
Everything so far assumes the braces are already on. Some kids start treatment with a bite problem that’s best handled first. The most common is a bite where the upper teeth sit too far ahead of the lower teeth. Orthodontists call this a Class 2 bite, and many parents know it as an overbite.
For some of these kids, we start with a bite corrector. It’s a small appliance attached to the upper back teeth on each side. Together with elastics your child wears, it helps the upper and lower teeth meet the way they should. Whether a bite corrector makes sense is one of the things I look at when planning braces for kids.
This phase is a natural fit for DentalMonitoring, because once the corrector is on, there’s very little to adjust in the office. Your child scans each week, and the system tracks how the bite is changing on both sides. When it’s time to switch elastics, we send instructions through the app.
When the scans show the bite has corrected, I review the case and decide whether your child is ready for braces. If the bite needs more time, I set a follow-up window and we keep watching. Either way, the decision comes from what the scans show. And once braces go on, your child keeps scanning with the same app. The monitoring switches over to the braces phase.
What braces on DentalMonitoring asks of your family
All of this depends on one habit, which is the weekly scan. The scan tells me where each wire is in its job, and it’s what lets us skip the visits that don’t need to happen.
That’s why a steady routine matters. An occasional late scan isn’t a problem, and the app sends reminders. But if scans stop coming in, I lose the information that makes this schedule work. In that case, your child goes back to regular interval visits so I can keep a close eye on things in person.
As a parent, you can be as involved as you’d like. If your child is younger, you can connect to their account and see the scans and messages yourself. Most parents of older teens let their child handle it, and the system works either way.
Most families settle into the routine within the first month on DentalMonitoring. After that, a typical week with DentalMonitoring asks very little of your family, and the scan becomes one small part of it.
Getting started
If your child is heading toward braces, the best way to see how this would work for them is a free VO Smile Assessment. We’ll take a 3D scan and walk you through which visits your child’s case would likely need. If treatment is indicated and your family is ready, Same-Day Start means the braces can go on the same day as your assessment. In that case, you’d take the ScanBox home that day.
We see families at our Creve Coeur and St. Peters offices. We look forward to seeing you.
