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."

Blog 8: Research and Working EQ

1. My working Essential Question is as follows:

What is the most important thing an orthodontist must consider so they can help a patient?

2.  After being a patient at my orthodontist's office and volunteering there, I have come up with an answer to my question:

Patients need to understand which treatment options are available to them.

Staff should make patients feel at home and comfortable. 

3. So far, my most important sources that have helped me develop these answers to my Essential Question are experience as a patient and research articles from the ProQuest databases. My experience has shown me that patients that are treated kindly and like family are more likely to return for visits, trust their orthodontist more, and are more willing to keep up their treatment (rubber bands, retainers, avoiding hard/sticky foods..). My research on ProQuest so far consists of many studies on customer satisfaction and how being informed and totally included in the decision making process leaves the patient more content after their treatment is completed.

4. My mentor is Dr. Dan Banh DDS and I do my mentorship at his clinic, Banh Smiles. Right now, what I do at Dr. Banh's office is shadow and observe the staff. This relates to my Essential Question because without actually stepping into an orthodontics office, I cannot fully understand the treatment process, let alone what an orthodontist needs to consider for treatment.

Blog 7: Independent Component 1 Approval

For my 30 hours of service learning, I plan to shadow my mentor and learn what types of procedures are done by an orthodontist and assistants on a day-to-day basis. In addition, I would like to study to become an unlicensed dental assistant. The course requirements for unlicensed dental assistants as specified by the Dental Board of California are as follows:

• A board-approved course in the Dental Practice Act
• A board-approved 8 hour course in infection control
• A course in basic life support offered by an instructor approved by the American Red Cross or the American Heart Association, or any other course approved by the board as equivalent and that provides the student the opportunity to engage in hands-on simulated clinical scenarios.

I will meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence through pictures, certificates, and/or transcripts for the courses I might take.

I feel it is important to attain some form of certification in the dental field because orthodontists are dentists first. Basic dental training is key. Becoming an unlicensed dental assistant may also allow me to be able to be more hands-on during future shadowing.

My senior project hours log can be accessed here.

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.

Blog 6 - Second Interview Preparation

Who is your mentor and where do they work?

My mentor's name is Dr. Dan D. Banh DDS. He works at his privately operated orthodontics clinic, Banh Smiles, in Covina.

What five questions will you ask them about their background?

1. What was your life like growing up? 
2. Where did you attend college? For how long?
3. How do you feel your experience in school has affected the way you practice today?
4. When did you open your clinic? What struggles did you have getting started?
5. What do you find most rewarding about your job?
6. How does your starting salary compare to your current salary?

Blog 5 - Mentorship Reflection

• Describe your experience in how you found your mentorship? If you haven't found one yet, describe your experience so far in the search of a mentor.

I found my mentorship just by going to my regular orthodontist. After much thought, I decided on orthodontics as my topic and visited Dr. Banh's office to ask him to be my mentor. The reason I chose Dr. Banh as my mentor is because I was very satisfied with the results of my treatment and the way he and the staff treat the patients. Since Dr. Banh already teaches regularly at USC's school of dentistry, he was more than happy to mentor me and teach me about the field of orthodontics.

• Research question: What has been your most important article you have read so far and why?

So far, the most important thing I have read was chapter one of Orthodontics: Current Principles and Techniques, titled "The Decision-making Process in Orthodontics." This chapter includes the basics of what an orthodontist should look for in order to diagnose a patient, as well as guidelines for treating a patient. I feel that these two things are crucial to know since they are pretty much the center of an orthodontist's job.

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