Dentistry – Orthodontics – Bracket
Patent
1993-08-10
1995-07-04
O'Connor, Cary E.
Dentistry
Orthodontics
Bracket
A61C 700
Patent
active
054294991
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The invention relates to an orthodontic aid, bracket or buccal tube, produced on a plastics basis, comprising a reinforcement increasing the mechanical strength and arranged at least in areas acted upon by tooth correction forces.
Up to now, orthodontic aids, e.g. brackets or buccal tubes made of metal, plastics or ceramics have been known which all have their differing advantages and disadvantages. Aids made of plastics are inexpensive and easy to produce and simple to attach to and remove from the surfaces of the patient's teeth. A disadvantage of these aids is the fact that they are pliable in the areas, in which they are acted upon by tooth correction forces, and so they do not allow any exact control of the tooth displacement to be carried out.
Metallic, orthodontic aids have the disadvantage that the aids are very conspicuous due to the metallic gleam of the parts and their silvery colour and they give the patient undergoing treatment a so-called "metallic smile".
Ceramic parts, in particular produced from alumina, are considerably less conspicuous in the mouth of the patient than the metallic brackets. They do, however, have the disadvantage that they are very hard and pose problems during removal from the surface of the teeth after successful treatment.
In order to at least partially obviate the problems with the brackets produced on a plastics basis, it has already been suggested that these be provided with a metal insert in order to improve the stiffness of the bracket and also its mechanical strength. The metallic inserts do, however, cause a reduction in the transparency of the bracket and so this is just as noticeable in the mouth of the patient as metallic brackets. Moreover, when the metallic inserts lie exposed on the surface of the aid, they exhibit, in the same way as the metallic brackets, too great an abrasion and too great a friction with the arch wires generating the correction forces.
The object of the invention is to avoid the aforesaid disadvantages in an orthodontic aid of the type described at the outset.
This object is accomplished in accordance with the invention, in a bracket of the type described at the outset, in that the reinforcement is produced with the use of a ceramic material.
Despite the extremely large differences in the heat expansion and in the modulus of elasticity of conventional plastics and ceramic materials, surprisingly no problems arise at the transitions between materials. This is especially unexpected since, when the aids are worn in the mouth of the patient, a vast number of hot-cold cycles occur daily, for example when drinking hot or cold beverages or consuming hot meals or ice cream.
Oxide ceramic material is particularly suitable. In this respect, two solutions are in principle conceivable, namely, on the one hand, the use of the ceramic material as filler for the plastic of the plastic bracket in the mechanically stressed parts or, on the other hand, its use as starting product for the manufacture of an insert element for the mechanically stressed parts of the bracket.
The use of the oxide inorganic masses in the production of the reinforcement (in the following generally referred to as ceramics) reduces the abrasion and diminishes the friction of the arch wire inserted in the slot of a bracket. Preferably, the reinforcement essentially forms the surface regions of the aid which are acted upon by the correction forces.
The ceramic mass may be produced transparent or at least opaque and, for this reason, the aesthetic requirements to be met by the orthodontic aids are better fulfilled. Normally, a difference in colour to the plastic material can scarcely be ascertained. In comparison with the brackets which consist completely of ceramics, the risk of breakage during the removal of the bracket from the patient's tooth is avoided, and also the problems involved with the bonding of the ceramic brackets to the tooth surface, since the inventive orthodontic aids, like the known aids which consist altogether of plastic and are not reinforced, can be attache
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Dentaurum J.P. Winkelstroeter KG
O'Connor Cary E.
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