“I want straight teeth! Can my Dentist do braces?” Although there are some General Dentist that offer orthodontic treatment like braces and invisalign, an orthodontist would be the best choice to do braces. Both a General Dentist and Orthodontist have to graduate from dental school. In dental school they both learn things like cleaning teeth, extracting teeth, removing cavities and placing fillings. Once a dentist graduates from dental school they go on to practicing general dentistry. An Orthodontist continues with education and completes at least two years of both clinical and academic study. During this time an orthodontist treats patients under the supervision of other orthodontist. They have the opportunity to see treatment cases from start to finish and are exposed to a variety of dental problems. Orthodontists limit the majority of their practice to Orthodontics. Thus, they have an opportunity to treat more cases and often see more complex cases as well.

Orthodontics is generally not taught extensively in dental school. Thus, in order for a general dentist to learn orthodontics they take courses offered generally over the weekend. The courses may be limited to one weekend or a series of weekends and its up to the dentist to determine how many classes they would like to take before offering services to the public. To begin offering Invisalign to patients all the general dentist needs to do is take a half day course.   Some general dentist may just take one course and then start to offer orthodontic services without much experience. The majority of their classes do not involve actual patient treatment either. Becoming an Orthodontist requires more than just a few educational courses.

If considering treatment by a general dentist it is important to ask them how long they have been treating orthodontic patients and the extent of training as some may have taken more extensive training prior to offering their services.