November in Moscow is extremely depressive. The days are short and the landscape is permanently hopeless. So, to entertain myself over the past month I have been reviewing and interpreting currently available scientific data on an exciting technology of clear aligners. I have been publishing small bits of text on my Telegram channel on a weekly basis. Today, I decided to summarise all the information that I collected in one blog post. Here it is… Introduction Clear aligners are removable orthodontic appliances made of transparent plastic. Before the 2000s, these appliances were mostly used to ..read more

It is with tremendous sadness and even greater boredom I have to declare that over the past couple of decades we have been witnessing the rebirth of gnathology and, in particular, orthodontic gnathology. Gnathology first came into being about one hundred years ago in the US. The main premise of this pseudoscience was an idea that there is some correct position of the condyles inside the glenoid fossae and by reaching this sacred position, the patient will be forever cured of any temporomandibular disorders. For about half a decade since then, gnathologists had been arguing which particular co ..read more

Surprisingly, it seems that enthusiasm around breathing, premolar extraction, and CBCT technology has not yet been quenched. We have already seen a plethora of studies that attempted to measure the effects of premolar extraction on airway size using CBCT technology. It all started in the 2010s. Several research papers then claimed that premolar extraction can decrease the size of the upper airway [1,2]. Other papers, however, declared the absence of this correlation [3,4,5,6].  Last week, I came across a new study on this topic. This time the study concluded that premolar extraction may a ..read more

Today I decided to answer a simple but very important question. Is it possible to distalize molars on the lower jaw? Very often we see today clinicians attempt to push the lower molars distally to create space in the dental arch. But how far can the molars be pushed back? How stable will the result be? And if this manoeuvre is at all possible? Let’s find the answers… Maxillary distalization First, let’s look at the distalization on the maxilla. This has been done for many decades for Class II correction since the times of Edward Angle. Current evidence tells us that this method is rather effe ..read more

Today I decided to publish a remake of my old blog post from three years ago. Back in the day, it happened to become very popular and was consequently translated into Russian and Italian languages. However it probably was a rather dense read for a non-orthodontist. So I’d like to make the new version more laconic and easy to read for dentists and lay people. Palatal expansion is a procedure of opening a midpalatal suture. It could be easily done in children since their midpalatal suture is not yet fused. The main goal of this procedure is to correct transverse maxillary discrepancy, a conditio ..read more

We all know how important it is to maintain good oral hygiene during orthodontic treatment with fixed appliances. Many products have been suggested to help our patients in this regard. Such as, for instance, electronic tooth brushes… But do electronic tooth brushes provide better results than traditional tooth brushes? An interesting study that answers this question was done at Queen Mary University of London. It was published last month in the European Journal of Orthodontics. Precisely on my birthday. Let’s  have a closer look. Long-term comparison of the efficacy of manual versus powe ..read more

Despite the fact that many young Muscovites are fluent in English, the older generation (they are often the parents of my patients) are still more comfortable reading in Russian. Therefore, about a month ago, I launched a channel on Telegram with a goal to deliver useful orthodontic information to the locals. Following an old habit, I still write my texts in English and then translate them into Russian. As a result, I have already accumulated about a dozen short texts in English which aren’t published anywhere. Here is one of them. Since it was written primary for the patients, it might be a r ..read more

As William Proffit laconically put in 1990: “The indication for surgical-orthodontic treatment is that a skeletal or detoalveolar deformity is so severe that the magnitude of the problem lies outside the envelope of possible correction by orthodontics alone.”1 However, what lies outside and what lies within is usually a subjective decision. And whereas I have little doubts that an experienced orthodontist or maxfac surgeon won’t have any difficulty making this decision, I think it is great to have clear diagnostic guidelines to help less experienced colleagues to opt between surgical vs camouf ..read more

As Dr. “Wick” Alexander once put it “For many years, temporomandibular joint dysfunctions (TMD) were a medical no man’s land” [1]. In my opinion, such a situation resulted from a simple fact that it had not been possible to properly visualise temporomandibular joint (TMJ) structures until the introduction of CBCT and MRI in the mid 1980s. We had had a somewhat similar confusion before Holly Broadbent introduced the first cephalometric machine in 1930. As with cephalometrics, it took decades to accrue scientific data in the area of TMJ. Luckily, today we are sufficiently equipped with evidence ..read more

I have recently returned from my prolonged vacation in the UK where I met several members of the British Orthodontic Society. It’s sorrowful to realise that despite the existence of such brilliant, scientifically-rigid, and morally upright organisations, the general public around the world is predominantly ignorant about orthodontics – or even worse – misguided by marketing propaganda and self-proclaimed orthodontic dictators. Here are 5 simple facts I wish ordinary people to know about our specialty… Indiscriminate maxillary expansion is not scientifically justified by any, even the most po ..read more