Technical & Metallurgical evolutions have expanded the envelope of permutations required during orthodontic mechanotherapy.Passive Self Ligation appliances (Smart Clip / Clarity SL) offer the clinician advantages galore, but the laws of averages invariably have their own agenda!
In traditional twin bracket appliances, rotations were quickly resolved on the initial archwire because the ligature made it possible to seat the archwire to the bottom of the bracket slot, creating the necessary force moment for derotation.This is not possible with passive self ligation appliances.Infact with initial archwires of 0.014” a play of 10 degrees is possible.Options to counter this phenomenon involve either stepping up the archwire or ligating conventional ligatures on Self Ligation brackets,defeating the very purpose of the appliance.Its here that the “Tandem Archwire technique” outlines its efficiency.
The technique involves insertion of a second small cross sectional archwire in the bracket slot without disturbing the first aligning archwire.This is done at the second appointment. In an 0.022 slot, it’s possible to insert one 0.014” and one 0.016” archwire, and in an 0.018 slot, two 0.014” archwires can be inserted. This allows the round archwires to fill the slot completely in the bucco-lingual dimension and in some cases even in the occluso-gingival dimension.
The poster will present diagrammatically the bracket-archwire interactions and 5 clinical cases where this has been successfully employed to showcase that "Tandem archwires"definately fuel the fire of rapid leveling and allignment to augment the relationship of the passive self ligation appliances with the busy orthodontic professional!!!