After treatment whether you are doing braces or Invisalign, you have to wear retainers. Basically I consider braces and Invisalign as an active phase of treatment, but because our mouth is a dynamic environment, as every day we talk, we eat, our tongue in cheek are always moving, so there is always pressure on the teeth, so after the braces or Invisalign is off, there is nothing holding on to the teeth anymore so there is a chance the teeth will move back to the original position especially during the first 6 to 8 months because that is the amount of time the gum takes to reorganize itself to let the teeth stabilize to the new position. So that's why retainers are very important once you finish your braces or Invisalign treatment, you need to be wearing this retainer to maintain this position, I always tell my patient the first 3 months try to wear it as much as you can, so that allows for this reorganisation of the gum and bone and things like that during this period of time, after that, you should wear the retainers before you go to sleep just for long term maintenance.
Now I continue to see my patients 6 monthly after they are done with their active phase for a few things because sometimes maybe the patient thinks they are wearing the retainers well but they are not or maybe it requires some adjustment and at the same time monitor their condition because if you catch these problems early, we can actually reverse these problems with very minimal work. But if you don't get your followup sometimes it gets very complicated and you have to redo the whole treatment again, which is what we want to avoid.
So after you have done your treatment, wear your retainers and continue to see your orthodontist regularly and that is the interval to get your regular cleaning done as well so I think you can plan all these with your dentists so you get your regular maintenance and at the same time monitor the alignment.
