Collaboration

June 14, 2019

I wanted to reflect on a continuing education event that I was lucky to attend on Tuesday, June 11, 2019.  The LV Med talk was hosted by Ai Orthodontics.  The amazing speakers I had the pleasure of hearing Tuesday night were: Angie Lehman, RDH, COM from OMT of York https://omtofyork.com/, Dr. Phillip Brinton from Brinton Pediatric Dentistry, https://www.brintonpediatricdentistry.com/, Dr. Ankur Johri from Lehigh Oral and Maxilliofacial Surgery https://www.lehighoms.com/p/dental-implants-Allentown-PA-Home-p30890.asp, Dr. Nadia Afzal from Valley Dental https://valleydentalsmiles.com/our-team/, Dr. Shehzad Malik from The Heart Care Group https://www.heartcaregroup.com/, Dr. Eric Holender from ORL Associates http://www.orlassociates.com/, Dr. Suneel Valla who is a sleep medicine physician at St. Luke’s Quakertown, Miners Memorial and recently Coordinated Health, and Dr. Aejazz Issa from Ai Orthodontics https://www.aiorthodontics.com/.

It was great to see how a group of passionate individuals when working together can end up having great results for a patient outcomes.  It was also nice to hear how since these individuals have started down their paths of there profession how they have learned new ideas which have helped their patients have better results.  The best part of the whole thing is that myofunctional therapy and sleep have been the miss links from their previous treatment plans, but not anymore.

Now that they know about myofunctional therapy they are getting better results because not only are they moving the structure (bones, in cases such as orthognathic surgery), but they are also concentrating on make the muscles stronger.  Because of this they are making sure the patient has the correct oral rest posture, which means they have ruled out if the patient has a tongue tie, tongue thrust, any oral habits or any airway issues.  Did you know that only 20% of tongue ties actually will cause speech issues, but just because the tongue tie isn’t causing speech issues doesn’t mean that the tongue has the correct oral rest posture.  I enjoyed everyone’s presentations.  It is still amazing to me how little people think about how important sleep is but if you are not sleeping and breathing correctly it can be a bad combination.

But there is good news that there is a shift to sleep medicine and people are now paying attention to it.  If you are not breathing through your nose you are not exchanging oxygen and nitric oxide correctly which can influence you to possibly have cardiac events in the future.  As I have stated before, breathing is the first thing they make sure you are doing when you are born and the last thing that is check before you are dead but nobody is talking about it at any other time.  For the benefit of the patient it has to be a collaboration of providers to get the patient where that need to go to get the best outcome.