When a patient comes in for a wire clip, the most important part is that you make sure the wire is in the proper position before just clipping the wire.

Most of the time, the patient leaves with the wire in place, but if it is poking them there are multiple things that could have happened: A bracket broke, the wire shifted, or the crimps were not properly tightened.

If any of these things are the case and you just trim the wire, the wire could be shifted and not be centered like it should be! This could hurt the cemetery of the patients arches and even affect their bite.

So before clipping the wire, make sure:

• The wire is centered

• The wire is all the way through the 7 bracket on the opposite end

• The stops are properly crimped holding the wire in place.

Once all of these things are in place then, using the wire cutter as shown above, you can trim the wires.

**Sometimes the wire is not long enough to cut with the wire cutter, so you can smooth the end of the wire using a red football bur.