Broken Labial Bow?
If you have patients coming often with broken labial bows, the problem could be one of several.
If you take a few precautions, you could eliminate 99% of broken labial bows in your practice.
If you use a general lab for making appliances, they may not know the importance of not rebending wire. Once a wire has been bent, it can not be straightened out and bent again. A specialist orthodontic lab should know to start again if a wrong bend has been made. Wire fatigue may be the problem but it is not the main one.
If the labial bow is active and is retracting anteriors, be sure to cut the acrylic free from behind the teeth so that the retracted teeth have somewhere to move to. Failure to do so will cause pressure to build up in the appliance as you keep tightening the bow, eventually causing the bow to break.
Be sure to instruct the patient not to use the labial bow as a handle to remove the appliance. This will cause the bow to break due to eventual wire fatigue.
By being aware of these three things, you can eliminate 99% of broken labial bows, the other 1% . . . . .we’re still trying to work that out ourselves!!!
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