Lingual orthodontic bracket with hinged closure

Abstract

A multiarch assembly comprises first and second parallel archwires, each formed into a segment of an orthodontic archform spanning a plurality of a patient's teeth, a multiarch bracket having a bracket body defining reentrant archwire slots along opposite occluso-gingival sides of the base for receiving and seating the first and second archwires in a base portion therein, the base portions of the slots having a predetermined center-to-center occluso-gingival spacing; and an interarch connector having a connector body formed of a resilient material with first and second archwire openings spaced apart along an occluso-gingival axis of elongation and sized for the first and second archwires to be threaded therethrough, the connector body being resiliently deformable along the axis of elongation to enable the archwires to be spread apart and then to urge the archwires toward one another in a direction of contraction along the axis of elongation; the holes in the interarch connector being spaced center-to-center a distance approximately equal to or less than the center-to-center spacing between the base portions of the occluso-gingival spacing of the archwire slots on opposite sides of the bracket; whereby the archwires, multiarch bracket and interarch connector exert force on the bracket, and thereby on the patient's teeth, with gradually increasing precision as the occluso-gingivally spaced archwires are urged by contraction of the interarch connector toward one another into the base portions of the spaced slots.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.