Clinical Experience With A Lip Retraction System, Bracket Bonding Adhesive & A Cordless Light Curing System By Juan C. Echeverri, DDS, DAOS s clinicians, we are constantly searching for instruments or materials that will help us perform our job in an easier and efficient manner. The author has worked with three new items consisting of a cordless curing light, a lip retraction system and a clear bracket cement from Ivoclar Vivadent ® that he found to be extremely useful and Fig. 3: Size regular OptraGate ® retraction device. A would like to share this information with the readers. As dentists practicing orthodon-tics or restorative dentistry, it is necessary to find a device or system to retract the lips and improve access to the teeth. Many systems are used, including rubber dam, cotton rolls, plastic cheek retractors, or a combination of some or all of the above. Some are very efficient Fig. 2 Fig. 1 Fig. 1: OptraGate ® used for orthodontic bracket bonding. Fig. 2: OptraGate ® retraction device comes in three sizes: Regular (pictured above), small (left), and junior (right). once placed, but are cumbersome and time consuming to place such as the rubber dam, others are fast, but are unstable, such as cotton rolls. An option for lip retraction may come in the form of the Optra-Gate ® (Figs. 1 & 3) by Ivoclar Vivadent. ® This is an auxiliary aid for clinical use that allows the oper-ating field to be accessed with ease, and has been mentioned in the literature as being more comfortable over longer periods of time. 1, 2 It retracts lips and cheeks during treat-ment and offers patients the ability to have more movement of lips than other retraction devices, thus allowing more comfort. It was tried in our office utilizing both regular and small sizes (Fig. 2) during orthodontic bonding procedures (Figs. 7, 10, & 11) and restorative work on anterior teeth (Figs. 12, 13, 16 September/October 2012 JAOS
Journal of the American Orthodontic Society September-October 2012: Page 16
