Good Neighbor Podcast: Milton & More
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Milton, Crabapple, and Hickory Flat
Good Neighbor Podcast: Milton & More
Expert Episode: Personalized Orthodontics with Dr. Korry Tauber of Stable Orthodontics
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Ready to shed the old ideas of orthodontics? Join us as we delve into the transformative world of personalized orthodontics with Dr. Korry Tauber of Stable Orthodontics. We explore how the focus on individualized care enhances the entire patient experience, from the initial consultation to post-treatment follow-up.
Dr. Tauber shares the importance of using advanced technology, including 3D scans and AI simulations, to tailor treatment plans that cater to the unique circumstances of each patient. Whether you're a child, a busy adult, or an athlete with specific needs, learn how this customized approach can lead to quicker, more comfortable outcomes. But it doesn't stop there. Discover how Dr. Tauber’s multilayered treatment philosophy considers long-term health implications, including airways, sleep, and overall quality of life.
If you've ever wondered how a smile can be more than just straight teeth, this episode is for you. Tune in now to learn about the intersection of orthodontics and holistic care that could change how you view your dental health forever. Feel free to book your complimentary consultation today and start your journey towards a healthier smile!
Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast
Speaker 1This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Stacey Poehler.
Speaker 2Hey everybody. This afternoon we are talking with Dr Corey Talberg, owner and chief orthodontist at Stable Orthodontics in Milton. Welcome, dr Corey.
Speaker 3Hey, stacey, good to be back.
Speaker 2Today we're going to be talking about personalized orthodontics and what you guys are doing at Stable to really customize your patient experience and make sure that you're providing the exact right services that a patient needs. Can you start by explaining what personalized care in orthodontics means to you and how that might differ from the one size fits all orthodontics that people might find at a bigger practice?
Speaker 3At Stable Orthodontics, everything starts with our new patient examination. We discuss the position of the teeth with a 3D scan which we take with a small intraoral camera, and then we also discuss what x-rays need to be taken specific for the patient, because we're looking for certain things at certain times. Our goal is to put all that information together with a comprehensive intraoral exam where I take a look at all the teeth to come up with an individualized treatment plan. We don't pencil anybody into a preset treatment plan. We talk about options. The best time would be to start or to begin orthodontic treatment and making sure that we are good stewards of our time together. My goal is to actually be involved for as least amount of time as possible. I understand that families are busy with school and after school. I want to make the orthodontic experience positive, quick and efficient. Our plans are bespoke to every patient, along with our examination process and the treatment we select.
Speaker 2What do you think this does for the patient experience or outcomes?
Speaker 3Yeah, those are great questions. One of the things we talk about is patient comfort when choosing an appliance, making sure because we do have options we have different things that we can place on the teeth or in the mouth to make the experience comfortable. We talk about things like 3D printed expanders whether or not a self-turning expander might be a good option. We talk about things like custom fit braces made specific to the individual's smile. We don't use a preformed prescription on every tooth. That'll speed up treatment and make it more comfortable. And then, with our clear aligners, we also use clear aligners. We also use clear aligners that are fit to every person's individual bite and smile and move the teeth safely and efficiently from start to finish, so we maximize comfort. We talk about life in orthodontic treatment. Our goal is still the same, no matter what appliance we choose to use, and the journey of how we get from where we are to where we want to go depends on the conversations we have at our office.
Speaker 2Do you feel this helps to create improved outcomes for your patients as well?
Speaker 3We can achieve a straight, beautiful smile more quickly, comfortably and accurately. We look at the teeth at multiple points throughout treatment. We take an intraoral scan with our intraoral camera and we can even look at where the teeth were and where they've come. We also plan with the end in mind by doing simulations and outcome demonstrations to assess where the teeth are going to be at the end of treatment. We talk about designing a smile rather than just aligning teeth we're looking for. The outcome is going to be when the braces or the liners come off and everybody gets to show off their beautiful smile. So we're planning with the end in mind, with digital measurements throughout the whole process in mind, with digital measurements throughout the whole process.
Speaker 2Can you think of a specific example of a patient who came in and how you were able to implement this personalized orthodontic care to help that patient achieve the results they wanted?
Speaker 3Yeah, that's an awesome question. So we've had one patient in particular that comes to mind who needed a replacement front tooth after it was knocked out. The space had to be designed perfectly to fit the proper size tooth for the replacement. We also helped get the pink gums that frame the white teeth and the smile to the right position to make sure that everything was even when the final tooth went in.
Speaker 3We took initial measurements and designed, along with the restorative dentist, a final dimension of what we wanted that tooth replacement to occupy, both height and width. Then we designed our treatment appliance, which in their case was clear aligners, to help achieve those final results. The last thing that we looked at was where the gum line, because we knew that we had to lift the gum line in some areas and even the gums out for when someone smiles, not showing too much or too little gum tissue. We put the teeth in the right position, reshaped the gum line and the patient had an implant placed to fill the missing tooth. At the end we sized for a final retainer that held everything in the right position.
Speaker 2The shape, the face, the jawline, it all changes over time. How does the special equipment help you figure out what a 10, 11, 12, 13 year old may look like five, six, seven, eight years from now?
Speaker 3We always have to plan with the end in mind, but also what this smile is going to be like in 10, 20, or 30 years.
Speaker 3Some of them comes from aesthetics that dentists have often used in other fields, like prosthodontics, which might be replacing like a full set of teeth. In our digital plans, we take a full facial photo and lay the final smile inside the person's lips and face to give them an idea of what their final smile will look like. And then we use concepts that we know are true to people who age over time. One of those, for example, is that we don't want to lift the front tooth too high under the lip because as we get older, the lip and tissues of the face tend to drop or sag a bit, and we don't want to hide any front teeth. We always want to make sure that, even with age, a smile doesn't age. We want to keep that young, youthful look in our smiles. So we change our mechanics and how we move teeth to make sure that we don't introduce any negative effects that would not make a smile shine as beautiful as an adult or later years as an adult or later years.
Speaker 2That's really cool. Can you talk about your interaction with a patient and how that sets the stage for the relationship and success of the orthodontic care and how you personalize that with each patient?
Speaker 3So we have conversations that start as early as the initial consultation about what we want life to look like. While we're in orthodontic treatment and beyond, I meet with every patient and family individually and I block off sufficient time to have in-depth conversations. While we're treating the smile with either braces or aligners, we talk about the pros and cons of each treatment and what life is going to look like. While we're going through orthodontic therapy, we talk about whether or not somebody is an avid sportsman, whether they are into athletics, or if they're on the dance team or cheer squad, if they play a contact sport. We talk about if they're on debate and they're speaking a lot, or if they play an instrument and how playing an instrument with either aligners or braces can change the embouchure. We talk about all the different extracurricular activities, because we know that our kids are doing so much more. We talk about adults who are in front of a camera all day long or they're a C-suite executive and have to get up and give presentations.
Speaker 3There are benefits to different types of therapies. We also talk about things like eating habits If we are snackers or coffee sippers throughout the morning, or if we're an athlete, consistently taking Gatorade or Powerade to replenish electrolytes. All these different things play a role in what appliance we choose to help achieve our final smiles and what personalized care. This is not a short process. Sometimes we can correct a smile in quickly as six months, but a lot of comprehensive treatment takes a year and a half to two years, but a lot of comprehensive treatment takes a year and a half to two years. We want to make sure that everybody understands exactly what it's going to take to go through the process and what life is going to look like while we work together and, of course, what the smile is going to look like even beyond, when orthodontic treatment is complete. Everything, down to what kind of retainer, would be right, whether it's a glued on orthodontic wire, clear, removable or hard acrylic with a wire, are chosen with input from the patient and family.
Speaker 2I think we've all been to medical practices where the practitioner, the orthodontist, the doctor, is kind of popping in and out of many rooms so everybody's stationed there and waiting for their turn. Can you talk about the scheduling practices you use, how you get that one-on-one time with your patients and maybe how that would differ from that, what almost has become the new medical model of waiting?
Speaker 3I understand because I've been on the receiving end. I've had to wait long periods just to get a minute with the doctor. We schedule specifically to avoid that. We see everybody on an individual basis. You won't see a large turnover of people in a hustle through our office. We schedule a full hour for our new patient consultation, where I have plenty of time reserved to have good conversations with new families. In the clinic we schedule one patient at a time, organized to a specific chair. Space is reserved. Nobody waits at our office. You're seen as soon as you come in. That's important to me. I want to see patients and families with enough time for me to have conversations like what the plans are for the weekend and what they enjoy doing in their spare time or after school, or how school went today, or what activities they have.
Speaker 3I never want to schedule so little time that we don't have those conversations. Yeah developing a relationship as we improve your smile is really important.
Speaker 2It sounds like those conversations reveal details to help plan your treatment. Can you talk about technological advancements like 3D imaging, digital scans and maybe even AI, and how that kind of plans into creating an orthodontic personalized treatment and orthodontic personalized treatment?
Speaker 3The use of technology in our office is at the forefront. We have 3D imaging and 3D scanning. What that means is that we have a lot more information to make more accurate decisions about treatment. The intraoral scanner, for example, takes hundreds of pictures of all of your teeth and stitches them together to make a digital model of your smile. We then take a facial picture with the teeth showing wide and bright. We have the image of a face and the image of the teeth where they are the image of a face and the image of the teeth where they are. The last thing we do is we have a 3D x-ray that has the teeth showing above the gum line, but also we can visualize the bones of the face and the roots of the teeth. When we lay these together, we get a good picture from the outside in of where your teeth and smile are. We love to show our smile outcome simulator where, with AI identifying specific landmarks on teeth, from the intraoral scan to points in your lips and face, to set all the teeth straight and to put that straight smile on your face, to show you exactly where your teeth are going to be and where we hope your final smile to be at the end of treatment. This only takes just a few minutes after the scan is done, and usually while I'm talking through what orthodontic treatment is going to be like, the AI works in the background to generate this final smile. In our office we have a big presentation screen that we put up that final picture and can show people what their smile and face will look like with their teeth totally straight. Then we can go deeper and show them where exactly the teeth are being moved and what's happening to the bone and gum tissue exactly the teeth are being moved and what's happening to the bone and gum tissue. So we can plan from the inside out and a view from the outside in.
Speaker 3One of the other things that we utilize our 3D imaging software for is to assess a patient's airway, and the nose and mouth are the opening to which we let air in and out of our lungs.
Interview with Dr. Corey Talberg
Speaker 3At the forefront of dental practice and orthodontics, we have become really aware of the volume of air that we use during the day and how our mouth and teeth affect the amount of air that we get in and out of our bodies every day, not only when we are awake, but also while we sleep.
Speaker 3We've been more focused on how much air we're moving, because restless sleep, tooth grinding, nighttime incontinence and being able to achieve deep, restful sleep make our day more productive and generally feel better. We shy away from therapies that might impact the position of the tongue towards the back of the throat. If the tongue is dropping to the back of the throat, the airway becomes obstructed. If this happens during nighttime, we can have a decrease of the airflow and episodes where we're not getting enough air while we sleep and could lead to, along with other complicating issues, things like sleep apnea. So these personalized treatments were also assessing how much the airway is being affected and changes in the airway that we can achieve in a positive way to make sure that someone is breathing as well as they can.
Speaker 2One of the things with the airway and assessing that is mouth breathing. Can you share what it means for orthodontic care and is that something you can see and tell if someone's a mouth breather when you're doing some of your assessments?
Speaker 3Orthodontists have been aware that the way you position your muscles and face can have effect on the position of the teeth. But one of the things we're starting to ask parents if they notice any breathing difficulties with their child at night. Are they snoring? Are they restless? Are they actually breathing through the nose? There's a lot of research that says when the mouth is closed, the tongue is elevated and we breathe through our noses. This practice is also common in things like meditation and mindfulness. Right, these are things that we know have a positive health impact.
Speaker 3As orthodontists, we can help facilitate this breathing. A lot of it has to do with the width of the upper jaw. We always talk about the lower jaw line being the jawbone that moves as we open and close, but the upper jaw holds the upper teeth. The roof of your mouth is the palate, also the base of the nose. Some of the things that we talk about are using expanders to help gain width of the upper jawbone, and a positive side effect of that is actually to increase the width of the floor of the nose and by increasing the width we can increase the amount of total air volume that someone breathes in and out at nighttime and if we are moving enough air in a positive direction through our nose. Enough air in a positive direction through our nose, we can see improved sleep, feeling more rested, waking less tired, improved performance in school and work.
Speaker 3And we have people saying that they snore less and have less instances of sleep apnea where they actually stop breathing at nighttime. So a lot of these things are not prescriptive. We're not going to prescribe an expander to help cure sleep apnea. But in growing children, if the width of the jaw bones the top relative to the bottom is out of balance, we start asking questions about how somebody is breathing at night.
Speaker 3An appliance that will help put the upper jaw bones in the right position could have several positive outcomes or side effects that have to do with airway and breathing. It's on our checklist when we do a complete examination. We talk about the airway habits at nighttime and during the day. If we as orthodontists can take one more look past the lips and the teeth and take a look at the tonsils, take a look at the airway volume, take a look at or ask how we're breathing at nighttime, all of these things can be put into painting a full picture of how we can help someone improve their airway or decrease negative symptoms associated with a narrow or small airway.
Speaker 2That's really cool. What are some long-term benefits of personalized orthodontic care, and do you see anything that goes beyond just having straight teeth? What other outcomes are your patients experiencing?
Speaker 3In our office. One of the reasons why we are named stable orthodontics aside from horse country and being in Milton is this concept of putting teeth in the proper position so they are stable over time. Teeth are held in position based on an equilibrium theory and that theory says that the pressure from the teeth, from excuse me the pressure from the lips and tongue push and pull on the teeth to keep them. So if we, for example, pull the front teeth back, we're going to encroach on the movements of the tongue and over time the tongue is going to push those teeth back out and possibly cause some spacing the pull of the lips in front of the teeth. If we push the teeth too far forward, they'll collide with the lips in the front part of your face. As the lips pull back on the teeth, we can get crowding as a result. The other thing that we know is that if we complete orthodontic treatment at a young age, we can expect a little bit more jaw growth over time.
Speaker 3A lot of adults have crowding of the lower front teeth later in life, usually due to one of two things. It could be that the teeth are not proportionate in their size. There's a specific ratio the top and the bottom teeth have to be in order to make sure that they align perfect. And if we encroach on this ratio without making any adjustments to the tooth size we can expect later in life we might see some crowding or spacing come back. The other thing that we know is related to jaw growth. Like I mentioned, if we don't leave enough space between the top and bottom teeth when braces come off late, lower jaw growth can push the lower teeth into the back of the top teeth. That pressure will again lead to crowding of the lower front teeth. At Stable Orthodontics we understand jaw growth later in life, the upper and lower incisor ratio and to make sure that through proper treatment, selection, relapse and later crowding or spacing as an adult does not come back.
Speaker 2It sounds like you've kind of created a community of other practitioners that you'd be referring folks to right Like, for instance, if there were serious breathing issues you would refer somebody out to an ENT, or if they need to go see an oral surgeon. I want to talk a little bit about maybe some of those relationships you have and how that would benefit your patients and having that true personalized orthodontic care.
Speaker 3Yeah. So what I've done over the past several years is develop a network of people who are like-minded and in the same area as me, to make sure that when I refer somebody they're going to be treated the same way that I treat patients and families. I want them well cared for and convenient. As a privately owned orthodontist, I refer to specialists, whether it's a medical professional or a dental professional, who are privately owned and operated. Like me, I find that the personalized care people get, which we've talked about today, is above and beyond what you might be getting at an office that is owned by a corporate group or an office that values volume over patient experience.
Speaker 3In our network I speak to medical professionals, nose and throats, pediatricians, pediatric dentists, general dentists and restorative dentists. If we need any kind of specialized care, we've got a contact and we've got somebody who I would trust and send my own kids or family to, because I want your family to be cared by a group of professionals that I would send my own family to. So it takes a while to get a group connected like that, but once you do it, you feel good about sending somebody out on referral because you know that they'll be cared for just like you've cared for them at your office. I'm particularly sensitive to where we send patients on referral. We're lucky to be in a community where we have several high quality private practitioners who seek to help patients first and make sure that the experience is top-notch.
Speaker 2That's great. I imagine some parents, children, even some adults, have heard something today that makes them want to give you a call and book an appointment. Can you talk a little bit about you know how someone can get a consult with you, what age you recommend someone coming in to be first seen and what your availabilities like this spring?
Speaker 3Yeah. So the American Association of Orthodontists recommend that first visits for children be seen by an orthodontist before age seven. The reason for that is because there are permanent teeth are growing below the gum line that we could image and see before they even come into the mouth. At these early visits we're not looking to start treatment, but we are looking for complex issues that could go undiagnosed if we don't have a first look. And it's an opportunity for me to provide guidance about your child's growing smile.
Speaker 3If you have any questions about the way teeth look, the way teeth are coming in, breathing problems, a tongue tie, tongue movements or teeth that are out of place, we want to be the ones to talk to you and have a conversation. Through this break we have availability for new patient consultations and there's a couple of different ways to book an exam, and we always offer these exams totally complimentary because we don't want any barrier for any family coming in to receive information about their child's growing smile. Six zero. We'd be happy to schedule you an appointment over the phone. The other thing you can do is go to our website, wwwstableorthodonticscom, and in the middle of the page or on the top right of the page, you can click book now and you can look directly onto our schedule and book an appointment.
Speaker 2That's super convenient. Parents appreciate that, especially since we don't remember appointments until eight o'clock at night and the office is closed. Being able to book online makes it easier for busy parents out there. Thank you so much today for chatting with us, Dr Tauber, and really sharing how you guys are creating a personalized orthodontic experience there at Stable. Thanks again.
Speaker 3Thanks, stacey, for the opportunity. We look forward to chatting again soon.
Speaker 1Thanks, Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses, go to gnpmiltoncom or call 470-664-4930.