ORTHODONTIC PEARLS Fig. 1 Spa rk Clea r By Jeffery Gerhardt, DDS al i gne r S: a First look M y clear aligner jour-ney started in 2002, when an orthodontist friend called me and recommended that I become Invisalign-certified. “You can’t do that much with their aligners, but they have great marketing,” he said. “Patients come in for an Invisalign consult, and most of the time the case is too compli-cated, so we do braces on them.” I took my friend’s advice and signed up for a two-day continuing education class in Dallas, TX. Being from Austin, a casual sort of place, I wore workout clothes to class. I thought I was the only general dentist in the class. Most of the students wore ties and jackets. I sat down next to the only other person wearing workout clothes and found out he was also from Austin. We became friends. r ev i S iti ng H i S tor y When I first used aligners, I finished many of my cases with braces because it was hard to achieve the results I wanted. At that time, all diagnostic and aligner work was done with impressions. Because I was never happy with the results aligners delivered, I did not want to buy a $42,000 iTero scanner to commit to Invisalign. I tried a few other aligner companies but, again, never loved the results. I stopped using clear align-ers for years and stuck to fixed appliances. Fig. 2 6 Spring 2025 JAOS
Journal of the American Orthodontic Society Spring 2025: Page 6
