When, Why & How Early Treatment Influences the Pediatric OSA Management

Orthodontics, as well as medicine, is undergoing a group of interrelated revolutions that are dramatically changing how treatment will be proposed and carried out in the future. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in craniofacial growth modification treatment as an intervention for pediatric sleep-disordered breathing (SDB). Pediatric SDB, a broad-spectrum breathing disorder that occurs during sleep in children, encompasses primary snoring, upper airway resistance syndrome, and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). In children, snoring is the most commonly recognized SDB, which may progress to OSA if left undiagnosed and untreated. Although OSA can be definitively diagnosed only by a physician, the orthodontist may be called on to screen for OSA, contribute to the identification of underlying dentofacial components, and assist the physician in managing the disease. As such, the orthodontist is not able to manage this care alone, and a cooperative shared effort between the orthodontist and other medical professionals is preferred to optimize care of patients with OSA. Understand how to take advantage of the benefits from these new scenarios in OSA treatment while performing a classical early treatment will be offered in the lecture.

Colleagues will be updated with a specific review of the literature in the first part while the central one they will be connected with specific problems in orthodontics. Effects of maxillary expansion on OSA, premolars extractions, maxillary protraction, molar distalization will be discussed.

The complex mechanism behind OSA is still unclear but we need to accomplish it. Researchers begin their work for a novel topic based on purpose, creativity, critical thinking, and logic. This leads to the fundamental pieces of the research endeavor: question, objective, hypothesis, experimental tools to test the hypothesis, methodology and data analysis... a first step in our field is needed.