Ask Dr. Christensen: Should canines be moved into missing lateral incisor spaces?
Dr. Gordon Christensen isn’t afraid to talk about his failures as well as his successes in clinical practice. That’s what makes him popular with his peers—he knows when something isn’t right, and he wants to help his peers avoid the same mistakes.
Take, for instance, moving canines into missing lateral incisor spaces. In this video, Dr. Christensen displays the mouth of a 35-year-old male who has had canines moved into the lateral positions. "That's not a particularly good looking 35-year-old male, is it?" he asks.
Dr. Christensen says it makes no sense to him to move the canines into lateral positions. He has come across the problem many times in his practice, and he has tried to correct it each time, but admits he has not experienced much success.
Dr. Christensen said he and his team worked on the mouth shown as the example in the video. He says it wasn’t easy and explains some of the steps he and his staff took to return the man’s mouth to a normal state.
Dr. Christensen notes that even non-dentists will recognize that there’s something wrong with the teeth in the video. He encourages his peers, “Don’t try to have orthodontists move canines into lateral positions.”
He refers to his video that’s available, “Dr. Christensen’s clinical failures and how to avoid them,” which covers this dilemma and more.
Watch more of Dr. Christensen's videos here.
