May Extra Blog Post

The school year is coming to a close, but senior project is finally over. Presenting to a room of over thirty people for about an hour was an unforgettable experience. I was not sure how well I would do speaking for so long but surprisingly I managed to get comfortable enough to speak clearly and with confidence. I'm actually proud of how I did, despite not making time (that's what happened, sadly).
Reflecting on the senior project, I am glad I was able to do mentorship at an orthodontist's office and learn more about the field. It allowed me to see all sorts of cases and really piqued my interest in orthodontics so perhaps I might be able to use what I know in the future in my career.

April Extra Blog: Final Project Presentations

The end of the school year is quickly approaching. Both independent components are completed, research is coming to a close, and there is one presentation left.

The upcoming weeks will consist of preparation of content based on my independent components, research, interviews, and mentorship. All of these sources will help me put together my hour-long presentation. Even more pressing is my activity, which is supposed to reflect and teach about the answers to my essential question.

I find that it's difficult to come up with an activity for orthodontics. Putting braces on a model would be expensive, and it isn't like my audience can simply make retainers. So far the best I have come up with is an activity with clay. One blob of clay would be fresh, having been kept in a plastic bag. The other blob of clay would be dried and hardened after being left out and exposed to air. The clay would represent dental age, and the students participating would learn about it by trying to change the form of both blobs. My activity would represent my third answer (treatment timing).

March Post: Finding the Sources I Need From the Internet

So far, researching my topic has been surprisingly difficult. The only books I could find on my topic only really covered basics and contributed little to answering my essential question. Even with all of the information available to me about orthodontics online, it is always a challenge to narrow the results to fit my answers. At some point my searches became more fruitful once I got more creative with the keywords for the databases I use. Better keywords meant finding fewer advertisements and newspaper articles. Finding a new angle is definitely helpful for getting out of a research rut.

Treating Class II and III Malocclusion and Compliance

Over the course of my project, I have learned about overbites, underbites, crooked teeth, and various forms of malocclusion.

Each one of these are treated differently, and it takes longer to treat some than others. Underbites and overbites (classes II and III respectively) take the longest to treat because they require movement of the jaw. The younger the patient, the easier they are to treat. Past adolescence, treatment for classes II and III requires orthognathic or other types of surgery. Young patients, however, can use headgear or reverse headgear to correct their malocclusion.

While an orthodontist can give her/his patients headgear and send them on their way, it isn't guaranteed that they will wear it. In order to ensure compliance as much as possible, the orthodontist should take steps such as explaining the importance of treatment and getting the patients' parents on board.

Digging Deeper into the Treatment of TMJ

Half a year ago, I discovered a painful popping and clicking as I opened and closed my mouth, followed by ringing in the ears. A visit to my doctor, my orthodontist, and Google have shown me that I have a condition called TMJ, AKA TMD, AKA temporomandibular joint disorder. In simplest terms, it's the dysfunction between the muscles that move the jaw and the joints that connect the mandible to the skull.

Over the course of the school year, my research has brought me to scholarly articles on the disorder, as well of its common origin and the best treatment options.

At this point it is unclear to me whether or not TMJ is caused by orthodontic braces or is even connected to orthodontic treatment. I am also on the hunt for successful non-surgical remedies, but there isn't much luck narrowing that down, either. I feel that finding a solid fix for TMJ will be very helpful in finding more answers to my essential question: What is the most important factor an orthodontist must consider when treating a patient?

2014 in Perspective: A Review of Findings

About four months. That's how long I have been researching for my senior project topic. The question I have been trying to answer is, What is the most important factor an orthodontist must consider when treating a patient?

Perhaps my research was merely focused on just one answer, but I find that appliances play a large role in orthodontic treatment. Appliances used by practicing orthodontists include braces, headgear, palatal expanders, and retainers. As I have mentioned in previous posts, such appliances will correct bites and tooth alignment, or do all sorts of other miraculous things to get treatment done. (Proper planning and judgement is necessary to get the right appliance into a patient's mouth, of course, so it isn't as if the orthodontist is being forgotten.)

Basically, orthodontic appliances ARE the treatment and it would be very hard to get much of anything done without them. Combined with an orthodontist's experience and knowledge, appliances are powerful.

I hope that the new year brings forth many other revelations that will help me with my senior project. Happy 2015.

Wait a minute, I had braces, too!

That's right, ladies and gents. From 2009 to 2011, I was shackled by those pokey little metal brackets and wires. No soda, no chewy or sticky foods, nothing too hard or crunchy... It was difficult being a sugar fiend with braces. Especially when my wires were tightened. No eating took place for days after visits like those.

02.25.2009

Somehow, my experience with braces was not completely terrible. Dr. Banh and his employees (past and current) made the experience much more pleasant. They are friendly, joke with patients, and treat people like family coming in for a friendly visit. There is a warmth that keeps patients like myself coming back. As important and fascinating as the atmosphere is, I must digress.

It's obvious, but people with braces have their own individual reasons for visiting an orthodontist. Some of those reasons are even difficult to see with the naked, untrained eye. In my interview with Dr. Banh, he told me that there are many steps to diagnosing a patient and developing treatment plans. At some point during that process, x-rays are taken to show what is going on in places we can't see. Here is an example of an x-ray from my file.

It's tough to tell, but my maxillary cuspids (canine teeth, top row) in the x-ray are in the roof of my mouth. In order to get those teeth down to their designated positions, I had to have oral surgery to make openings in the roof of my mouth, attach chains to the teeth to pull them, and wear braces in order to keep my teeth straight throughout the process. If I had not gone to the orthodontist to have an exam, my cuspids would have erupted in place of my incisors (front teeth). Orthodontics helps prevent dental abnormalities such as my "vampire teeth."

Getting the Ball Rolling

So far, I have been lucky enough to be able to volunteer at an orthodontist's office where the people are lovely and I am learning things here and there. It is important to note that I am off to a slow start, since I was not working there during the summer and my previous schedule hadn't allowed me to work more than a few hours at the office.


My time spent at Dr. Banh's clinic has been filled with general helping out with menial tasks. My first day was spent filing away patient data (and conducting my first interview), while my second day consisted of organizing papers into packets.

The multitude of patient files in need of being filed away.

After I finished my interview on the first day, one of the assistants, Roberta, showed me a few different appliances that are used by Dr. Banh.

The first appliance (pictured top left) is a skull with TADs, or temporary anchorage devices, screwed into the bone of the mouth in order to move teeth into a desirable position. The second appliance (top right) are different types of palatal expanders. Their purpose is to widen the upper jaw to create a better fit with the lower jaw. The third appliance (bottom left) are braces with clear brackets, which are more aesthetically pleasing than traditional metal brackets. The fourth and final picture (bottom right) is of retainers, which are normally given to patients after their braces are removed in order to prevent shifting of the teeth. At Dr. Banh's clinic, patients are able to design their retainers however they like, and the retainer for the palate has a very cute watermelon design as an example. I thought it was pretty cool to see what types of devices orthodontists use and what purpose those tiny appliances serve.

The packets I put together on the second day are one of the ways the clinic gets the word out about orthodontic healthcare and their business. The letter portion of the packet was written to the parents of elementary school students, informing them about National Orthodontic Health month and the care Banh Smiles offers. The other paper attached was a coloring page for a contest. The winning class of the contest will win a pizza party sponsored by Dr. Banh. I think the idea is lovely and is an excellent method for promotion and raising awareness. Unfortunately, the packets took all three hours of my time that day and I got cramps from moving papers back and forth. I'm thankful I didn't have to staple them, too.

The informational letters and coloring pages that I was supposed to form into packets.

Class Trip to the Library

On Friday, August 29th, my house walked over to Cal Poly's library. We were led by our teacher to a computer lab type room and watched a presentation from one of Cal Poly's librarians about research and using some of the resources available to us through the Cal Poly library's website. From that presentation, I learned to use the ProQuest databases. I really like using ProQuest because there are so many online articles on my topic to choose from, so I have plenty of research options. On the other hand, I have to be sure to narrow my search because I would otherwise be stuck scrolling through hundreds of unwanted ads for orthodontic clinics that opened around ten years ago.

Some of the many results from ProQuest with the keyword "Orthodontics"

In addition to finding out about using the online databases, I had the opportunity to find books for my research on orthodontics for my senior project. I found seven books that piqued my interest, but I was only able to check out five thanks to the library's check-out limit. I checked out the following books:

• An Introduction to Dental Terminology
• Oral Health, Dentistry, and the American Public
• Removable Orthodontic Appliances
• Dental Anatomy and Occlusion
• Orthodontics: Current Principles and Techniques

The five books that I checked out from the Cal Poly library

I spent a good chunk of my Friday looking at these books and they are so interesting. The most interesting part is the pictures. One book has thousands of pictures with cases and diagrams and graphs. There was one case (pictured below) of a woman with bimaxillary protrusion, meaning the woman's teeth on her maxilla and mandible (upper and lower jaw) were excessively protruding forward. Her treatment included having her premolars removed and undergoing an augmentation genioplasty (chin augmentation).

I find it amazing that people can change their appearance with the removal of some teeth and surgery. Even the use of orthodontic appliances like braces and headgear yield impressive results. These books and their content have served to fuel my passion for the medical field and orthodontics. It's all just so fascinating.

A case shown in Orthodontics: Current Principles and Techniques

Examples of appliances for orthodontic treatment from Removable Orthodontic Appliances

Anatomy of the oral cavity