Crowding is a condition when due to lack of enough space, teeth are overlapping each other. Also known as over crowding or crooked teeth which causes teeth overlapping each other.
Types of Crowding
Depending on severity of crowding, there are 3 types of crowding;
- Mild Crowding: This is the least amount of crowding. In mild crowding one or two teeth are slightly overlapping or rotated to allow them to fit themselves in the small space available.
- Moderate Crowding: In this situation, few teeth are are crooked.
- Severe Crowding: when there is lack of space on almost all front teeth and almost any single tooth is either rotated or over lapped.
What is causing Crowding
there are many reasons causing crowding including;
- Teeth to jaw size: If total sizes of teeth is bigger than jaw size, then teeth get crowded to fit themselves in small jaw. This has been noticed specially in people who inherit their jaw from one parent and their teeth from the other.
- Early loss of baby teeth: Baby teeth are responsible to hold the space required in future for eruption of permanent teeth. if child lose his or her baby teeth way earlier than the time of eruption of permanent teeth, then the space may start to get closed by neighboring teeth. Usually this happens if the child needs to remove baby teeth too early due to cavity or trauma and accident. This space closer will result in permanent teeth to be overlapped once they erupt resulting in crooked teeth.
- Misalignment of permanent teeth: If permanent teeth erupt not in the direction they supposed to, then they can also result in overlapping. This usually happens when a baby tooth is resistant to fall off and push the permanent tooth during eruption side way.
Ways to Correct Crowding
There are many ways to deal with crowding and crooked teeth. The most common way to treat crowding is to use Invisalign or braces to move teeth to their proper position. In some very severe cases, extraction of one tooth on each side of mouth might be needed. Thiss create extra room for remaining teeth. While this is a normal practice, Dr. Korshid believes that it is better to save any single tooth. Our approach is to use variety of techniques to create room rather than removing a healthy tooth.
Use of Veneers as a way of cosmetic dentistry can also some times used to deal with crowding. Veneers are thin ceramic layers that are placed on the front surface of teeth. They are used to improve the shape, color and sometimes cover up the crowding issue. In mild to moderate crowding, veneers can be places to cover the misalignment to make them look straight. The advantage of this cosmetic treatment is that it can be done as fast as 2 weeks. This is faster than braces or Invisalign which may takes months to be done. Not everyone is a candidate for veneers to fix crowding.