Early Interceptive Orthodontics

At Bank Cottage, our specialist orthodontist can assess your child’s teeth and jaws to ensure their mouth is developing correctly.  If you or your dentist are concerned about your child’s dental development, usually after the age of 6-7 years old, our orthodontist can provide an opinion on whether any early intervention would be beneficial.

Early orthodontic intervention is performed on young growing children to treat potential issues as early as possible, for example: maligned developing jaws, potentially overcrowded teeth, protruding front teeth and teeth that are developing in unfavourable positions, causing your child to bite abnormally.

Early orthodontic intervention also enables the specialist orthodontist to identify potential harmful habits such as thumb sucking so we can provide education and support to you and your child on how to reduce the risk of the damaging effects of these habits.

Early intervention can often make future orthodontic treatment less complicated and in some cases, if growth and dental development are favorable, eliminate the need for orthodontic treatment when older.

Benefits include:

• Create and preserve space for potentially overcrowded permanent teeth
• Reduce the need for tooth removal when older
• Make future orthodontic treatment easier
• Reduce treatment time when older
• Guide facial growth where possible

Following a careful oral examination, our specialist orthodontist can advise you on whether there is a benefit in early intervention for your child.  If it is too early to intervene, but orthodontic treatment will be needed in the future, our specialist orthodontist can discuss when the time is optimum for treatment and what it will entail.

If you have any questions about orthodontic treatment for your child or to book a consultation, please call the Bank Cottage Dental Practice on 01454 412053.