Comprehensive
Dental Sleep
Medicine

A Year-long Evidence-Based Comprehensive Program

We are proud to announce a unique full-year program in the physiology of normal sleep and sleep disorders and all aspects of the practice of dental sleep medicine.

A knowledgeable and dedicated faculty has been assembled whose goal is unbiased teaching in a safe learning environment that assures you the opportunity to learn practical evidence-based concepts in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disturbed breathing.

Dr. Glassman. with the able assistance of Dr. Don Malizia, has recently completed a full-year sleep program for the International Academy of Sleep Medicine. After years of teaching two-day programs, the realization is that this comprehensive approach led to much greater success in terms of superior mastery of the subject matter as well as improved treatment regimens and professional relationships.

Our goal is to create a program that will be tailored for the general dentist with a sincere interest in sleep medicine.

A Welcome to our Unique Yearlong Program in Dental Sleep Medicine

Welcome! I want to introduce you to a unique, yearlong program our talented faculty is thrilled to offer. We are striving to discover the fifteen to twenty “students” who can benefit from this full year program that has the rare combination of being academic, evidence based, and at the same time extremely practical. This yearlong program will explore ALL aspects of sleep medicine and the role of the dentist in the medical community. Our goal is to increase your effectiveness by helping you recognize the model change required to transition from a dental practice to one that involves high level communication with our patients and our medical colleagues while effectively managing sleep breathing disorders.

I will be the lead instructor working with a talented team of excellent educators whose primary goal is to create an ideal learning environment. The program focuses on the science of sleep and all aspects of dental sleep medicine and oral appliance therapy. At the same time, our goal is to help you navigate the business of sleep medicine, improve your practice, and decrease the stress levels that are often associated with the practice of dental sleep medicine. After teaching a course similar to this last year, I watched the confidence levels of our attendees grow significantly. This increased confidence led to better patient communications, better physician relationships, more enjoyment in their practices, and improved business models.

A careful look at the program will reveal that there are FOUR two-day in person courses, six full day virtual courses with review sessions following all these courses. In addition, there are clinical support sessions, literature presentations, and case study reviews. Relevant literature will be provided for each course. All our communications, as well as literature and documents, will be available to you through our private social media network. As a graduate of our course, you will have continued access to this network for ongoing education and discussion of questions that you may have in the future.

We have designed a program that is appropriate for the dentist who is new to sleep medicine as well as the experienced practitioner who is interested in providing quality care to their patients. We believe we have an ideal program for those who see the value in a practical yet evidenced based approach to the role of the dentist in sleep medicine and who wants to appropriately apply clinical thinking to their daily practice in the best interest of their patients.

I invite you to read the information provided on this site carefully. We hope you consider registering, and ask that if you have any questions, you do not hesitate to contact me directly. We are seeking to find those who can truly benefit from this program – and we hope you are one of them!

All good; always is!

Dr. Barry Glassman

Program Structure

Upon enrollment in the program, you will be sent a link with the following information:

Introductory Basic Literature.
Pretests and pretest answers.
PowerPoint presentations from the lecture series.
Literature for all the case presentations.
A special “Introduction to Literature – How to Read a Paper” session before the first live session.
All attendees are given a password to our private social media network. Communication between faculty and attendees can take place, all announcements and links to all the zoom programs will be posted there, and the literature and relevant documents will be stored in a password protected format. This network will remain available to all attendees after the course for ongoing education and communication purposes.

Format

There will be FOUR live two-day sessions in the year period. The courses will be at an oceanfront hotel in Melbourne, Florida.
A two and a half review session will be held virtually after THREE live courses. These will be followed by a clinical support session where we will discuss cases and address questions about patient care.
The fourth live course is a full review of the course and an instructional “exam” that is reviewed on the spot for maximum learning.
There will be six FULL DAY virtual sessions (on Fridays.)
Each Virtual Session will have a review evening the following week for 60-90 minutes.
There will be literature provided and assigned for each session; There is a format to follow to submit literature reviews.
There will be a Pretest (learning purposes only) provided before each session.
Each attendee will have access to nearly unlimited relevant literature
Each attendee can choose their subject for a 20–30-minute presentation. Literature will be provided, but further research is mandatory. There are two literature presentation days.
CE credit is offered for the four live and courses and the six virtual courses. A certificate of completion is offered to those who attend all the sessions, complete the lit reviews, do a literature presentation, and participate in an oral review that is completed with an emphasis on your cases and your exam.

Program Flexibility

The program is designed to allow the attendee to study at their own pace AND to achieve individually determined goals.

Those goals can vary from learning more for one’s own knowledge base and effectiveness, to completing the program and achieving certification available.

While of course there is a set schedule for the literature submission, they can be read and submitted at your own pace. Attendance at the clinical sessions is totally optional as well, even for those working towards certification

Program Schedule

Details to be revealed in 2023

Meet your instructors

Barry Glassman DMD maintained a private practice in Allentown, PA, which was limited to chronic pain management, head and facial pain, temporomandibular joint dysfunction and dental sleep medicine.
He is a Diplomate of the Board of the American Academy of Craniofacial Pain, a Fellow of the International College of Craniomandibular Orthopedics and a Diplomate of the American Academy of Pain Management.
He is a member of the American Academy of Orofacial Pain and the American Headache Society.
He continues to teach and lecture and is actively involved improving the patterns of practice in chronic pain and sleep disorders, working diligently to improve coordinated multidiscipline efforts in both these arenas.
He currently serves at the Director of Education for the International Academy of Sleep and is an invited lecturer for the Tufts University Dental School Craniofacial Pain Program. He has authored over twenty papers. His most recent papers include his work on the sphenopalatine injection for migraine that was published in HEADACHE, and a review of the association of TMD and Occlusion that was co-authored with Dr. Don Malizia and Dr. Daniele Manfredini.

Don Malizia, DDS, limits his practice to orofacial pain and sleep-disturbed breathing at the Allentown Pain and Sleep Center inWilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Among his recent publications, coauthored with Dr. Glassman, are “The Effect of Regional Anesthetic Sphenopalatine Ganglion Block on Self-Reported Pain in Patients With Status Migrainosus” in Headache and “The Curious History of Occlusion in Dentistry” in Dentaltown.

Dr. Viviano obtained his credentials from the University of Toronto in 1983.
His clinic is limited to managing sleep-disordered breathing and bruxism. He is a Credentialed Diplomate of the American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine and has lectured internationally, conducted original research, and authored original articles on the management of sleep-disordered breathing.
His clinic was the first Canadian facility accredited by the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine and he is Clinical Director of the Sleep Disorders Dentistry Research and Learning Centre. Dr. Viviano also hosts the SleepDisordersDentistry LinkedIn Discussion Group, conducts dental sleep medicine CE programs for various levels of experience, including a 4-day mini-residency & administers the SDDacademy.com online learning platform which includes the zSleepClub online mentorship.
Contact
(905) 212-7732,
John@DrViviano.com or
sleepdisordersdentistry.com.

Dan Levendowski, President and Co-Founder of Advanced Brain Monitoring has over 30 years of experience developing and commercializing new technologies and managing clinical research.
He has been issued 24 patents for technologies which include novel sleep biomarker for prodromal risk of neurodegenerative disorders or delirium. He served as principal investigator for over $8 million in grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health, with $1.15 mm dedicated to the investigation of methods which improve oral appliance therapy outcomes. The American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine as recognized his research with one clinical excellence and four clinical research awards.

Dr. Sadigh holds a Diplomate status in Franklian Psychology, which was awarded to him by the International Viktor Frankl Institute. He is a Fellow of the International College of Psychosomatic Medicine and is a member of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine, the Society for Existential Analysis, and the American Psychosomatic Society.
Currently, Dr. Sadigh is teaching courses in Theories of Personality, Systems of Psychotherapy, Health Psychology, Mind-Body Medicine, Stress & Disease, The Psychology of Anxiety, Existential Psychology, and History and Systems of Psychology.
Dr. Sadigh's interests lie in clinical, biological, health, and existential psychology. His publications include work on sleep disorders, personality disorders, applied psychophysiology, stress and disease, the psychological treatment of pain, post traumatic stress disorder, and an existential approach to the treatment of psychosomatic disorders.
He is the author of three books, which includes Autogenic Training: A Mind-Body Approach to the Treatment of Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain published by Haworth Medical Press. He is also a published poet and an accomplished composer. In addition to his publications, he frequently lectures at state and national conferences.

Michael Cowen, CEO, and Founder of Awaken2Sleep started his journey in sleep medicine in 2003, performing in-lab sleep studies as a pediatric sleep technician at Loma Linda Children’s Hospital in Southern California. Five years later, this training and experience empowered him to save his infant daughter’s life from Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), a leading cause of SIDS in infants. After recognizing his calling to passionately assist others in helping their patients, Mr. Cowen became an expert in the Business of Sleep Medicine, working with physicians, building sleep centers, CPAP technology, and home sleep tests. In 2015, he founded Awaken2Sleep, a company that empowers growth-minded dental practices to level up with proven dental sleep medicine coaching, team training, and sleep testing.

*Other Guest Presenters May Be Invited To Participate

CE Credit Hours

Completion of the program offers a total potential of over 130 credit hours. A certificate of completed hours will be presented at the end of the course.

A Certificate of Excellence will be presented to those who complete the requirements necessary to sit for the exam and then pass the exam. Every effort will be made to successfully guide those who are interested in this Certificate.

Course Description
& FAQ

This yearlong study program offers a comprehensive course in sleep medicine and the role of dentistry in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disturbed breathing. The program has twelve teaching modules; each one presented monthly beginning February of 2023. There will be four, two-day long (Friday and Saturday,) in-person modules that will be held at the beachside DoubleTree Hilton Hotel in Melbourne, Florida. There will be six, one-day (Friday) on-line modules, two lit review presentation sessions, and a case presentation session.

Each teaching module will include a pretest and a post-test designed to allow the attendee to evaluate personal progress. These are not “graded” exams; simply learning tools for the attendee’s own purposes. In advance of each module presentation date candidates will receive relevant articles to be reviewed. Additional literature reviews will be conducted with each candidate leading at least one of the discussions. The last live session will be a review, an educational exercise (in the form of an examination) and a full day of review of the course content. Those interested in a certificate recognizing successful completion of the course will need to pass the examination and submit five cases in accordance with the established format. The final step in the certification process will be an oral review that will be based on the written exam and the cases presented.

RATIONALE

Our goal was to create the most comprehensive program available in Dental Sleep Medicine. The faculty has identified a need for an educational program to improve the potential of the dentist to educate his staff, his patients, and the physicians with which he or she works to create a patient-centered nonbiased, effective, patient-centric sleep program.

This continuing educational program will provide up-to-date principles and guidelines to help integrate the critical thinking skills into daily practice. The course emphasizes the use of Sackett’s concepts in evidenced-based medicine, which combines evidence-based science in with clinical experience and patient preference and emphasizes the need to use the science to guide one’s “art.”

FAQ

The 12 modules will be taught once a month. It will thus take one year to complete the program.
The program is designed for optimal learning and full attendance is encouraged. The review sessions are summaries of the key sections from those who taught either the live or virtual courses. They are not meant to substitute for live and virtual attendance. For those interested in the certificate of completion, full attendance of the virtual and live courses is required. In the case of an emergency or illness, attendance of the review session may be considered.
You will need the ability to attend a virtual session via Zoom. You will also need the ability to scan documents.
There will be a private social media network that will be monitored regularly by the faculty. Questions and comments can be posted here to be shared with the entire group or only with the faculty. This will also serve to communicate on any potential scheduling issues. All the links for the courses will be posted on the network. The literature for each course and the literature reviews will be posted here as well.
Questions can also be raised and discussed at the clinical support meetings and of course at the beginning of each virtual session.
While Drs. Glassman and Malizia will serve as the core faculty. There will be other invited lecturers. We are fortunate to have Drs. Micah Sadigh and Dr. John Viviano, Dan Levandowski and Glennine Varga added to the faculty.
To receive the Certification of Successful Completion Certificate, attendees will be required to have attended the four live courses and virtual courses, submit the literature reviews and submit five cases following a case format provided. A literature review of a topic mutually chosen will be presented at one of the lit review sessions.
The examination must be passed, as well as the oral review completed.
Five cases must be submitted for review according to established format. It should be noted that it will NOT be required that each case be reduced to a specific AHI. In fact, the more the case deviates from being straightforward, the better.
There will be an established format and protocol distributed for the case presentations.
The examination will have some multiple-choice, short answer, and essay questions. The examination will not be testing “minutia.” There will be ample opportunity to write complete answers on several relevant subjects.
Note: All times EASTERN
The live, in-person modules are two full days (Friday and Saturday) from 8 AM to 5:30 PM. A full breakfast (7 AM) and lunch will be included on both days of the live sessions.
The virtual courses on Fridays are from 10 AM to 4:30 PM with an hour break for lunch.
The live course review sessions are on Saturday morning from 8:30 AM to 11 AM, followed by a clinical support session for approximately an hour.
The virtual review sessions are on Wednesday evenings from 8 PM to 9:30 PM
The Lit Review presentations are Saturdays, 9 AM to 5 PM.
There is ONE case presentation on a Friday from 10 AM to 12:30 PM

Goals & Objectives

Course Teaching Goals

Provide the attendees with the opportunity to participate in a comprehensive yearlong evidence-based course in the principles of sleep medicine.
Increase awareness of the role of literature in learning and continuing education in the field of dental sleep medicine.
Discuss in-depth the role of bruxism, parafunctional control, and occlusion in treatment considerations
Encourage critical thinking while the attendees implement complex concepts in risk-benefit decision-making while treating patients with sleep-disturbed breathing.
Teach sleep medicine and dental medicine effectively to breed confidence and allow attendees can develop non-competitive relationships with mutual respect between themselves and the physicians with whom they work.

Course Learning Objectives

Comprehend and integrate extensive course material into their everyday practice of dental sleep medicine, including improved screening, referral patterns, and treatment.
Recognize the dental myths that are taught as fact and replace the concepts with evidence-based concepts.
Appreciate the complex concepts of the field of sleep medicine and understand that a direct relationship with a direct dose-response does not usually exist.
Understand the evidenced based factors involved in risk-benefit decision-making and apply those factors in an appropriate manner.
Describe the role of sleep apnea in metabolic syndrome.
Analyze the multivariate factors involved in treatment decision-making and the determination of “successful” therapy.
Understand how to critically read studies and other literature and determine the power of the paper as well as the weaknesses of the paper.
Develop improved ability to develop positive, honest relationships with patients and physicians.
Perform significantly improved clinical histories and examinations
10.Learn to prevent the majority of untoward effects of oral appliance therapy and resolve those that do occur.

Preliminary Syllabus

*Subject to Change