An Introduction to Sleep Apnea

Welcome to my blog. I’m Dr. Evetta Shwartzman, a dentist and co-founder of Dream Smile Dental, an award-winning dental practice that’s made its home at 2184 Washington Street in Canton for almost 20 years.

I received my dental degree from Tufts School of Dental Medicine where I met my partner, Dr. Konstantin Ronkin. Together, we aspire to delivering the best in dental care and technology to our patients.

I’m pleased to launch my blog because it’s a convenient way for my patients and the community at-large to learn about the many exciting developments occurring in dentistry today. Today—like never before—technology is making dental and cosmetic treatments easier, more comfortable and faster than ever before. However, with new technology can come uncertainty about the best path to achieve your desired outcome. In this blog, I hope to provide information that can help patients make more informed decisions about their dental health.

Today, I would like to discuss sleep apnea, an issue that’s growing in importance to dentists because of the relatively new opportunity to treat sleep apnea with something other than the often dreaded CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure) machine, which has been the standard treatment for more than two decades.

What is Sleep Apnea?

First, allow me to share a bit of background about sleep apnea. Sleep apnea refers to short pauses in or shallow breathing while sleeping. Breathing pauses can last a few seconds to minutes before normal breathing resumes. The return to normal breathing is often accompanied by a snort or choke, making it easy to see how sleep apnea disrupts the quality of a person’s sleep and is the leading cause of excessive daytime sleepiness. The National Heart, Lung and Blood institute has an excellent video that shows how sleep apnea occurs at http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/sleepapnea/.

The Risks

Sleep apnea often goes undiagnosed largely because most people don’t know they have it. However, left untreated, sleep apnea can increase the risk of car accidents and lead to or worsen certain health conditions such as high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, obesity and diabetes.

The Treatment and its Drawbacks

Until recently, people with the most common type of sleep apnea—obstructive sleep apnea (where the airway constricts, blocking airflow to the lungs)—endured treatment with a CPAP device, a nighttime air mask that [pushes air into a person’s throat to prevent airway collapse]. However, the machine is noisy and common complaints include sore nose, head strap discomfort, panic attacks and insomnia. This keeps some from seeking a CPAP solution or using it once they got it.

Dental Treatment = New Hope

Dentists can offer a much less invasive solution the 18 million Americans who suffer from sleep apnea. Nearly a decade ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the SomnoDent appliance, a custom device worn during sleep to increase the upper airway volume and reduce collapsibility. The device is backed by 14 independent studies and more than 12 years of research, which demonstrate SomnoDent’s efficacy and significant clinical benefits.

Learn more about this simple device at http://www.somnomed.com.

We’ve helped many patients better manage their sleep apnea with this device. Several of our patients have been able to give up their CPAP machines entirely and a handful of others are treating their condition for the first time. [More?]

In my next blog post, I’ll discuss the characteristics of a person with sleep apnea as well as the art (and it’s definitely an art) of fitting a patient for a SomnoDent device. Until then, keep smiling.