Before this review appointment, I’d already had a short appointment to get my lower removable retainer fitted. As I mentioned before, this is a clear plastic removable retainer that you wear at nighttime, and we recommend to wear it every night for at least 12 months and then every other night after that.

You must wear retainers for the rest of your life, to prevent your teeth from moving back to the position they initially started in but be aware that obviously there will be wear and tear and every few years or so, it may require replacing.

In this appointment, we were focusing on the upper teeth and because there’s just that one tooth that requires some movement. Last time Anna did a small bend on a wire, which created the tooth movement that was needed to fix and now there’s just one little tweak left.

We discussed using a purple wire, which is strong but has a little bit of flexibility to allow a few further adjustments which will enable the tiny tweaks required to get that last tooth correctly in position to where I want it.

This wire is called a purple TMA wire. We don’t use it all the time, but it is occasionally used at finishing stages for small adjustments. Anna created a small bend within the purple wire, and this should move the tooth very quickly (within a week or so).

We agreed to have another review appointment in a couple of weeks to assess the tooth position; we might be ready to take them off or might still need some final adjustments.

This was quite a short appointment, but as I said this wire is great. It’s not noticeable, you can’t see it unless you pay a lot of attention and look closely, but I think it good. That’s it.