[London, 14/09/2017] Invisible braces are very popular among adult patients at Harley Street Dental Clinic. Most adults who want to get their teeth straightened ask for invisible braces at Harley Street Dental Clinic because they wish to keep their dental treatment private.

People cannot help but stare at unusual sights and it is still unusual to see an adult wearing braces. This is why Harley Street Dental Clinic offers invisible braces. They give adults the opportunity to continue with their daily lives without continually having to fend off personal questions or stares. For those in a position of authority, or in a public-facing career, this can be a particular issue, which isn't easy to bear over months or years of treatment.

A discreet solution

At Harley Street Dental Clinic, the brand of invisible braces offered is called Invisalign. These invisible braces are in fact not even braces. They are clear plastic incremental aligners, made using 3D imaging and printing technology.

The patient comes to Harley Street Dental Clinic for a consultation for invisible braces, and if they are deemed to be right treatment, the Harley Street Dental Clinic dentist scans the mouth and feeds the information into a modelling programme to produce images of how the teeth need to be moved by the invisible braces into their correct position.

The information is sent from Harley Street Dental Clinic to the Invisalign headquarters in the USA, where a set of incremental invisible braces, aligners that snap on over the teeth like mouth guards, are 3D printed. Each one in the series of aligners nudges the teeth forward a tiny bit over about 2 weeks. Patients receive somewhere between 12–48 aligners, depending on their needs, and it takes, on average, about a year for these invisible braces from Harley Street Dental Clinic to do their work.

The aligners are removable for eating, drinking and cleaning, but must be worn for at least 20 hours a day if the straightening treatment is to stay on schedule.