COURSE DESCRIPTION 

This course has been specifically designed to introduce dental sleep medicine concepts in an entertaining, honest, and straightforward fashion using evidenced based concepts and emphasizing the model change required to successfully implement these concepts into a general dental practice.    

 Many commercial organizations are bombarding dentists with information about the potential role of dentistry is sleep medicine; unfortunately, only a fraction of those who take the courses that are consequently to learn sleep medicine have ever successfully added these concepts to their general practice.  This course will teach not only the concepts of sleep medicine but emphasize the challenges for the general dentist that need to be addressed successfully to benefit help your patients with sleep disturbed breathing conditions. 

 This evidenced based course will review the current lit from physiology of oral appliances to the role of oral appliance therapy and CPAP in sleep medicine.  All literature references will be made available to all attendees!  While the emphasis of the course is a deep dive into the science of sleep medicine, Dr. Glassman will weave the traditional methods of the business of dental sleep medicine with the Dedicated Sleep approach. 

Subjects covered in depth include:

  • The Model Change Required to move from dentistry to dental sleep medicine

  • The Challenges of Dental Sleep Medicine – Dental Myth Busting

  • History and Epidemiology of sleep medicine and dental sleep medicine

  • Consequences of Sleep Disturbed Breathing

  • Sleep Medicine principles including normal sleep staging 

  • The continuum of Sleep Disturbed Breathing

  • Non-obstructive sleep disorders 

  • Pathophysiology of obstructive sleep apnea 

  • Screening Tools/ Diagnostic Testing for OSA – Review of Pediatric OS

  • The use of Home Sleep Testing and polysomnograms 

  • The changing role of AHI in diagnosis

  • History Taking, the clinical exam, and patient consultation

  • Oral appliance Therapy including physiology and appliance choices, Documentation/Patient Flow/Physician contact with each visit

  • Supportive therapy options:  The role of nasal breathing, positional therapy, treatment of restless leg syndrome, myofunctional therapy, etc.

  • Non-OAT treatment options (Positive pressure, surgery,)

  • Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Appliance Complications

  • Defining, preventing, and treating Occlusal Dysesthesia

  • Parasomnias and Movement Disorders with special emphasis on bruxism

  • TMD for the general dentist including parafunctional control 

  • Patient Communication Skills as well as Keys to communicating with physicians.   Practice management:  The Four Agreements

 

Basic Sleep principles, including both the physiology of sleep and the pathophysiology of obstructive sleep apnea, will be taught in detail.  A short history of the disorder and a section on epidemiology is included.  Treatment alternatives will be reviewed, and of course oral appliance therapy will be taught in detail.  A critically important section on bruxism, a movement disorder of sleep, as well as a section on dealing with the temporomandibular joint issues and other comorbidities of oral appliance therapy including the “dreaded” occlusal changes, will emphasize the difference between fact and fiction.   

The “soft skills” taught at this course are, frankly, as valuable as the evidenced based education into the science of sleep.  An honest look at appliance therapy results allows the practitioner to appropriately set patient and physician expectations, a key to the success of any DSM practice