Say goodbye to the goo

Dental putty. We shove it in your mouth, jam it up against your teeth, try not to choke you when we do it and almost seem to pull your teeth out when we remove it. All in the aid of dental impressions, which aren’t always very accurate and we may need to repeat the whole putty process again, by which time you are sure you are about to lose your teeth. You never do, but dental putty is no fun for anyone. Thank goodness then that with Graham Tinkler, you can say goodbye to the goo and hello to Invisalign Itero in London.

Invisalign-Itero-in-LondonInvisalign Itero in London is part of Invisalign’s digital teeth straightening process. Instead of putty, Graham Tinkler uses a handheld scanner. He pops it inside your mouth and scans your teeth, and the Itero taking hundreds of pictures of them, that are then transferred to a nearby screen where you can watch them being built into a 3D picture of your pearly whites.

You can see their misalignment in all its glory, from any angle you like. This pinpoint accurate information is then run through another programme that can show you how Invisalign will move your teeth into their proper positions.

If you are inspired and decide to go ahead with treatment, all the information gathered with the Invisalign Itero in London is sent off over the internet (much quicker than sending impressions in the post) to the US Invisalign manufacturing site, which 3D prints 80,000 aligners a day.

The aligners have to come back in the post but, all in all, the digital era has made teeth straightening into a whole different ball game and Graham Tinkler has been playing it at platinum level since 2006. In fact, he was the dentist who treated Invisalign’s four millionth patient.

The reason this way of straightening teeth is so popular is the clear aligners are pretty well unnoticeable when they are on your teeth. That, and the fact that they come off for eating and cleaning, so a lot of the added hassle of alignment is removed from the process.