How we got from there to here and back.

Edward H. Angle dominated orthodontic armamentarium, diagnosis and treatment planning for almost a half century until Charles Tweed successfully challenged his mentor's nonextraction mantra. The ensuing diagnostic regimen used by Tweed, however, proved to have serious limitations and clearly resulted in the extraction of too many teeth. This caused a subsequent deterioration of soft tissue appearances of patients that neither they nor their doctors liked. This article will describe and illustrate how new expansion techniques differ qualitatively from those of Angle, and how these techniques offer patients and doctors less invasive and more comfortable therapies which do not jeopardize facial appearances.