iTero Digital Impression System - Our Office Just Got a Whole Lot More Futuristic!

If you’ve ever had to have impressions of your teeth taken, you know how much fun it is (or isn’t) to have those trays filled with putty pressed up against your teeth. Up to this point, taking impressions the old-fashioned way with the putty was necessary to orthodontics. Most orthodontists would mix up the material, put it in special horseshoe-shaped trays, and then insert it into the patient’s mouth for several minutes. Anyone who has done it knows that it’s a messy procedure and in some cases it can cause a gag reflex. It’s certainly not the most fun thing to do when going to the orthodontist, but I’m very glad to tell you that at my office in Glen Carbon, that that experience is no more!

Instead of using the traditional putty method, we now use the new iTero Digital Impression System, which scans patients’ teeth and lets us work with a 3D digital model. This system is available at our Glen Carbon office. The whole process takes somewhere between 8 and 15 minutes and gives us a perfect 3D representation of the patient’s teeth that we can interact with on the computer. iTero uses a combination of lasers and optical scanning software in a process called parallel confocal imaging. What it means for our patients is that the messy material and gag reflex are a total thing of the past!

The other added benefit of having 3D scans in this way is that patients can directly see the progress that they are making with their teeth alignments. This will help them better understand what is going on in with their teeth, and it will help us to better explain how we are helping them.

Also, since the entire process is digital, the amount of time it takes us to get working models of our patients’ teeth is much shorter and far less cumbersome than it used to be.

Instead of sending off the impressions of your teeth to Invisalign and waiting 2 to 3 weeks for the results, we now can email the scan of your teeth directly to the company and can get a speedier result. This then allows us to give you an amazing smile even more quickly and accurately!

In the end, this all means that we can have patients come into the office for their first visit and leave the office on their last visit with a great smile in a shorter time than we used to. I love seeing my patients as much as I can, but I also know that we’re all working toward giving them the awesome smiles that they are capable of as quickly as possible, and this is definitely one of the tools that will help us achieve that.

So what are you waiting for? If you aren’t happy with your smile the way it is, then we’re ready to help you get the confidence and the pleasure that comes with having straight teeth and a fantastic smile! Call us today at (618) 288-0600 and set up an appointment, or stop by our website at www.amazingsmiles.com. Also, don’t forget to friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter! I can’t wait to hear back from you!