I don’t know about you, but I can’t go anywhere these days without an adult relative or friend telling me how they feel about snoring, Sleep Apnea and/or CPAP.

Grace and my Dad or the Dude as my girls call him, both faces of Sleep Apnea.

Maybe I run in odd circles, but as I sit here writing this, I have had 3 different conversations about something to do with sleep apnea in the past 3 days -- one with my father who has to go back in for a sleep study; one with our good friend Rachel who discussed how her ex-boyfriend’s CPAP completely changed his life for the better; and one with my wife’s step dad who needs to be on CPAP, but confessed he despised the thing and gave up on it after a week. 

Whew!

If you are new to sleep apnea or just want more information here is a very good basic overview of Sleep Disordered Breathing from the AAPMD

I started with SML (Space Maintainers Laboratories) in 1996. I was there full time until 2006, when I partnered with an Orthodontist friend to start an ortho product company called SPEE Corp. After a few years we parted ways.

In 2009 my girls -- the stars of this blog series -- were born. I began a career as a consultant in the dental industry and transitioned into helped build a video marketing company. Later on I worked for Core3dcentres, part of the AURUM Group here in North America and an SML partner company. 

This past April, I got the call from Dr. Rob Veis. He asked to see if after a 10 year break I was interested in rejoining SML. The rest is, as they say, history -- well, almost.

The reason I risk boring you with my career highlights is to relay this: when I left in 2006, I would estimate that 30-35% of our business was sleep apnea appliances. The rest?  Pedo/Ortho -- with splints and mouthguards filling in some of the gaps.  Now that I’m back I would say 70% of our work is sleep appliance related and 30% is Perio, Pedo, Ortho, splints and mouthguards. (See graph)

This observation, coupled with a perceived lack of information and dearth of lectures on the topic of Pediatric Airway Related Disorders at some of the year’s key meetings (not to mention conversations with other industry professionals) has led me to conclude there exists a profound need for focus on our kids’ airway issues.

Not just the opportunities associated with adult apnea or the need for team dentistry or the necessity of working with MD’s and sleep specialists...

It’s about our kids.

We need to pay more attention to our kids, our pediatric patients, and pediatric airway issues that, left undiagnosed or untreated (or both), result in serious teen and adult problems down the road.

And all this leads back to my Grace. I would like to tell you that I was able to check off the snoring box on her airway/sleep health evaluation.

I can’t. She didn’t snore.

Perhaps I noticed the less obvious signs early enough so that her grinding, head posturing and sleeping on her stomach didn’t allow the vibration of the soft tissue.  This is an important point for both adults and children.  Dental professionals often field questions about what appliance is best for treating snoring.  Our response is always,

“Before we discuss appliances we need to determine if the patient has apnea.”  

The reason?  If you treat the snoring and not the apnea, you can create a silent apneic.  You run the extremely dangerous risk of overlooking the apnea when the snoring stops.

As Grace got older, she did begin to have apneic episodes.  That was when I knew it was time to get her to a dentist who understood Pediatric Airway Related Disorders.  She was 3 years, 2 months old. And to you naysayers out there, I respectively answer “No, I don’t believe that is too early to receive treatment for a potentially life-threatening condition.”  

More to say, more to come. Want to know more about my career in the dental industry and beyond? Feel free to check out my LinkedIn Page.