Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) affects millions of people worldwide, and the orthodontist's role in the patient's care ranges from co-diagnosis to co-treatment. This talk will attempt to demystify some of the ambiguity of the role that the orthodontist can serve. Every dental practitioner has patients with sleep disordered breathing abnormalities in their practice, diagnosed and undiagnosed. Understanding the deleterious effects of abnormal breathing on the orofacial complex is a vitally important component in achieving successful outcomes. Learning about normal and abnormal breathing and it's role in treatment success/failure will become commonplace in the dentist/orthodontist's armamentarium.
Learning Objectives:
After this session, attendees will be able to:
Indicate whether AHI is a valid metric of disease.
Determine if orthodontic mechanotherapy pre-disposes, prevents or even impacts an individual's risk to develop sleep disordered breathing.
Determine if facial morphology is predictive of sleep disordered breathing.
