Dr. Beth Rosellini writes about how the HealthyStart® Habit Corrector can tackle the clinical conditions associated with poor sleep, health, and breathing in children.
Benefits of Same-Day Delivery of HealthyStart®’s Preformed Intra-oral Appliance to Address Pediatric Sleep Disordered Breathing
by Beth Rosellini, DDS, AIAOMT
Oral healthcare providers are uniquely positioned in their communities to educate patient families on Sleep Disordered Breathing. Dental teams screen for signs and symptoms, and initiate low-risk, high-reward therapeutics to reduce and resolve corresponding poor oral habits and chronic conditions. As supported by publications by the ADA and the International Pediatric Otolaryngology Group, a cross-disciplinary approach to children’s breathing problems optimizes clinical outcomes. More specifically, dental providers have:
- The capacity and opportunity to educate patient families on this condition via the recommended 2x/year wellness hygiene visits. They simply spend more time with kids and caregivers than their physician counterparts.
- The knowledge to screen patients for root causes of Sleep Disordered Breathing with expertise in hard and soft tissue developmental patterns that can impact this condition. Tongue posture and function, inter-arch relationship, and shape of the arches all affect children’s breathing.
- Therapeutic tools to begin to reduce the symptoms, and, in some instances, completely resolve the concerns, preventing the need for any other therapeutic
Patients treated with intraoral appliance therapy, specifically with the HealthyStart® Habit Corrector, have demonstrated major improvement in many clinical conditions associated with their poor sleep, health, and breathing. The device incorporates internal therapy that benefits every pediatric patient. Because it is founded on passive wear of the device at night, it removes most barriers to compliance.
Adding services to treat the pediatric population is a natural progression for an adult practice. Most adult patients, especially if they have breathing problems of their own, can understand the benefit of intervening early to prevent the exacerbation of this condition and all the comorbidities that come with it. Their personal experience often enhances their motivation to support the child through the recommended plan.
Read more details about the HealthyStart® Habit Corrector in this article, “The Healthy Start System is Effective in Addressing Sleep-Disordered Breathing in Children” here: https://dentalsleeppractice.com/healthy-start-system-effective-addressing-sleep-disordered-breathing-children/
Beth Rosellini, DDS, AIAOMT, is a biological dentist and clinical researcher with special interest in chronic inflammatory conditions, airway and sleep health, and alternative/non-pharmaceutical therapies. She has completed her accreditation with the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology and has been selected as a speaker and educator in this space. She’s served as the principal investigator on studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, and she’s currently managing 2 ongoing clinical studies that are using the HealthyStart® System to evaluate clinical outcomes in more complex pediatric Down syndrome cases, as well as in children who suffer from chronic seizures.