GNYDM Sleep Symposium

Speaker: Steve Carstensen, DDS, FAGD, FACD, FICD, D.ABDSM

Please join us at the Greater New York Dental Meeting Sleep Apnea Symposium November 27-30, 2022 to learn from top educators in sleep dentistry. The next few pages will introduce you to the speakers and sponsors of this valuable symposium.

Steve Carstensen, DDS, has treated sleep apnea and snoring in Bellevue, WA since 1998. He’s the Consultant to the ADA for sleep related breathing disorders and heads the ADA’s Children’s Airway Initiative. He trained at UCLA’s Mini-Residency in Dental Sleep Medicine and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine. He lectures internationally, directs sleep education at Airway Technologies and the Pankey Institute, and is a guest lecturer at Spear Education and Louisiana State Dental School, in addition to advising several other sleep-related manufacturers. In 2014, he helped found Dental Sleep Practice magazine and currently serves as Chief Dental Editor. In 2019, Quintessence published A Clinician’s Handbook for Dental Sleep Medicine, written with a co-author.

At the GNYDM, I will be talking on ‘The Dentist’s Role in Sleep Related Breathing Disorders.’ We have an increasingly important ability to impact community health by making airway considerations an everyday part of our practices. We must reach beyond traditional dental areas of emphasis, like dental and periodontal health, to consider how our preventive focus can help our patients reduce their risk of complex health conditions like cardiovascular disease while improving quality of life. It is rewarding to embrace the professional challenges involved with medical discussions with patients and other health care providers. This talk will prepare the dentist to identify, refer for diagnosis, and properly manage sleep related breathing disorders in their day-to-day dental practice. I will talk about which patients need treatment right away, who must be sent through the diagnostic system, and why there are different types of treatment available. Dentists can make the biggest impact on health by emphasizing nasal breathing. Learners will experience exercises they can provide their patients right away to change bad mouth breathing habits into healthy nose breathing. We will talk about those different treatments and identify steps any dentist can take to move their patients from unaware to sleeping quietly and breathing well every night.

In the hands-on workshop, dentists will be able to match patients with the custom mandibular advancement device most likely to be successful for them. Each dentist will create a custom morning realignment device for themselves to learn how they can assure patients their bite won’t shift while they sleep. Having a semi-custom professional interim device to provide patients for immediate treatment is a critical part of practice, so each dentist will make one on themselves. You will hear expert advice about side effect management, setting expectations for patient experiences, and a thorough discussion of the various types of devices available. Dentists will leave the workshop prepared to immediately begin helping people breathe better.

I got into treating dental sleep medicine through the efforts of my mentor, Dr. Keith Thornton, inventor of the TAP device and Pankey Faculty. I met Keith in 1989 at Pankey and he encouraged my involvement in the new field from the start. A patient came to my dental practice seeking repair of his sleep appliance – after hearing Greg’s story and learning how beneficial his dentist had been for him, I began learning what I needed to provide such service to other patients. My father was diagnosed, after much cajoling, with severe OSA and felt so much better on his CPAP that I knew I wanted more dentists to have the good feelings of helping their patients improve their health. My teaching became more and more about what dentists can do to help people breathe, and in 2015, I sold my dental practice to start up a new practice with a like-minded partner where all we treat is sleep related breathing disorders. We work with health care providers like sleep physicians, primary care and cardiologists, otorhinolaryngologists, and speech and language professionals to find the right way to help people.

Many people think snoring is benign and mostly a social problem for the bed partner. When it occurs in adults, it is often the sign of an underperforming respiratory system. The scariest part, however, is when snoring occurs in children, or their airway is compromised because of mouth breathing. Snoring in adults has many health implications; snoring/mouth breathing in children sets them on a pathway where their health can never fully recover for their entire lives. The biggest opportunity for the public and health care professionals is to recognize compromised respiration as early in life as possible and correct it before bad things happen. Setting kids up to breathe easily for life is dentistry’s highest obligation.

Headline Sponsor: Panthera Dental – Panthera Sleep

Panthera Sleep division designs and manufactures cutting-edge custom-made medical devices for sleep-related breathing disorders such as snoring, obstructive sleep apnea and bruxism. All Panthera Sleep products are produced using proprietary design software, industrial 3D printing processes and medical grade polyamide type 12, a biocompatible, highly durable and versatile nylon.

What is Panthera Doing to Drive the Industry Forward?

Panthera Dental is committed to design and manufacture custom-made dental restorations, sleep breathing disorder solutions and implantology products using proprietary CAD/CAM processes, smart manufacturing, and superior quality materials. Panthera’s highly skilled and passionate team is dedicated to provide the highest quality outcomes and to deliver state-of-the-art solutions to dental, medical, and sleep professionals who strive to improve patients’ quality of life worldwide.

Panthera Dental is one of North America’s most technologically advanced centers. Panthera’s new state-of-the-art Industry 4.0 compliant facility is dedicated to the automated manufacturing of dental prosthetic products and dental sleep appliances. The Company has built a robust industrial and digital smart manufacturing business following Industry 4.0 principles allowing Panthera to produce with the highest quality and the fastest lead time in the industry and provide real-time production workflow information to customers.

Did You Know?

The Panthera D-SAD Classic oral appliance is now eligible for Medicare/PDAC reimbursement using the E0486 HCPCS code. Contact us if you need support.

Contact Panthera

Learn more about Panthera by visiting their website at www.pantherasleep.com or following them online at https://www.linkedin.com/company/panthera-dental-inc, https://www.facebook.com/PantheraDental/, or https://www.instagram.com/panthera_dental/.

Speaker: Stan Jones, CDA, DLT

Stan Jones brings more than 25 years of experience with coaching dentists and their teams in Dental Sleep Medicine. He was at the forefront of Dental Sleep Medicine at its early beginnings and has watched it evolve into what it has become today. He has extensive knowledge and on-hands experience in the implementation and practical application of Dental Sleep Medicine in a dental practice. He has studied the mechanics of oral sleep appliances and understands that every appliance application needs to be custom to that patient. He is a certified dental assistant and a dental lab tech for over 30 years, and a member of the N3Sleep Consulting Division. He is the lead trainer and coach for the DreamSleep System for Dental Sleep Medicine. Stan looks forward to meeting you and working together to streamline and optimize your sleep practice.

His lecture “Success in the Dental Sleep Practice” will address the following:

• Division of labor within your team
• The whole team training approach
• Medical Billing approach
• Understanding how teamwork will accelerate your sleep program
• How to best delegate the work responsibility among your team members
• Understand which medical billing solution is best for your sleep practice

How Did You Get into Sleep/This Industry?

A little over 25 years ago, I was working as a dental assistant and the dentist asked me to go with him to a dental workshop. While we were attending, I heard the words”Dental” and “Sleep” used in a sentence for the first time. I got a sleep test and found out I had obstructive sleep apnea. I continued to do research on this topic and made my first oral sleep appliance in the lab three weeks later. To my astonishment, it worked and changed my life. I was 50 pounds overweight, pre-diabetic, had high blood pressure, and a walking heart attack ready to happen. I lost the weight, got off the medications, and got my health back, plus my sleep apnea was under control. That is when I realized that if it could change my life, it could change others’ lives also.

How Does Your Practice Approach Sleep Medicine?

The DreamSleep approach to Dental Sleep Medicine is to keep it simple, streamlined, and productive for the patient and the dentist. The dentists that we have partnered with are providing a proven therapy for their patients and improving the health of the communities they serve.

What is the Most Profound Statistic or Misconception as it Relates to Sleep that You Want the Public to Know?

Great question! I talk with dentists monthly that struggle with proper appliance selection for their patients, and they don’t understand what a custom oral sleep appliance looks like. I coach dentists and their teams to narrow down the appliance selection process, take the proper measurements, and analyze the right variables to provide a custom fitting and performing appliance for their patients.

Sponsor: Nexus Dental Systems

Nexus Dental Systems is the only company in the market with a true end-to-end solution. Our conglomerate has the B2B expertise that fulfills the needs of a dental practice to: Identify, Screen, Treat, and Monitor Sleep Treatment Compliance for Oral Appliance Therapy. Our mission is to raise public awareness of sleep apnea, train dentists to implement dental sleep medicine, create sleep apnea programs for the industry, and connect patients with providers by creating sustainable and resilient systems for providers and the public.

To learn more about Nexus Dental Systems, visit https://nexusdentalsystems.com/ or follow it at https://www.facebook.com/NexusDentalSystems or https://www.linkedin.com/company/nexusdentalsystems.

What Sparked Nexus’ Passion for This Industry?

For too long, dental sleep medicine has been a fragmented patchwork of solutions; difficult to navigate and stitch together. We have seen many dentists give up on sleep medicine because they could not overcome several common hurdles, the most frequent complaint being problems with medical insurance billing. While medical billing is a huge obstacle, it does not exist in a vacuum. The truth is that lack of training, disjointed electronic medical record systems, and fractured insurance payer systems have all made it difficult for patients to receive care. For a condition that affects millions, that is unacceptable.

An estimated 67 million Americans, about 1 in 5, have AHI >5, and they need our help. Their health is suffering, and their condition will get worse without treatment. In 2017, the ADA tasked every dentist with screening for Obstructive Sleep Apnea and providing treatment when prescribed by a physician. We are here to help you deliver on that mission.

What is Nexus Doing to Drive the Industry Forward?

Nexus Dental Systems is a group of innovative companies joining forces to save more lives. Ours is a vision of a comprehensive solution that simplifies the delivery of life-saving treatment to millions of patients with OSA. We have united several key solutions for medically necessary dental treatments into one fully integrated system: credentialing (ACSDD), whole team training (N3Sleep), patient outreach and education (DreamSleep), and an innovative medical billing solution that is integrated into the whole process (Nexus Bill). Each of these solutions addresses a core challenge dentists face when treating sleep. Together we are reshaping the future of dental sleep medicine by removing barriers and expanding access to care.

Speaker: Kristie Gatto, MA, CCC-SLP, COM^®

Kristie Gatto, MA, CCC-SLP, COM^® received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Houston in Houston, Texas. She has worked as a speech language pathologist in the public and private school systems, skilled nursing, rehabilitation and children’s hospitals, and in private practice. In 2004, Ms. Gatto became the co-owner of a private practice in Northwest Houston and began her journey in treating children with pediatric feeding disorders. After years of searching for answers in traditional feeding approaches, she underwent training in the field of Orofacial Myology and became the first certified orofacial myologist in the city of Houston in 2011. Ms. Gatto is currently the owner of The Speech and Language Connection, which has two offices in the greater Houston area and employs multiple speech-language pathologists with various specialties.

For roughly twenty years, she has focused her clinical skills on treating patients with issues in feeding, dysphagia, deglutition, oral sensory aversion, orofacial myology, and swallowing- related disorders, as well as articulation, phonological processing, and associated concerns related to sleep related breathing disorders.

Kristie Gatto is a current Board of Directors member of the Oral Motor Institute and on the editorial review board for Dental Sleep Practice magazine. She is a member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and a past president of the International Association of Orofacial Myology. Additionally, she has served as a Board of Directors member for the American Academy of Private Practitioners in Speech Pathology and Audiology and a member of the Community Advisory Board at the University of Houston. She is an instructor for the International Association of Orofacial Myology.

Her symposium topic will be Oromyofunctional Therapy and Breathing.

How Did You Get into Sleep/This Industry? 

As a clinician that focuses on the neuromuscular education and re-education of the muscles of the head and neck, sleep became a natural progression of intervention as more collaboration has been seen amongst professionals in recent years. Patients exhibited difficulties that were associated with sleep and swallowing. When interventions were provided to address the head and neck musculature, a correlation of better sleep began to be reported.

How Does Your Practice Approach Sleep Medicine? 

Professionals that provide oromyofunctional therapy and intervention work with dentists and sleep professionals to strengthen the oropharyngeal muscle complex for swallowing, sleep, articulation, and overall enhanced muscle functioning. We work with our patients to increase strength and tone within the orofacial complex and collaborate with dental sleep professionals to provide an optimum airway during neuromuscular re-education.

What is the Most Profound Statistic or Misconception as it Relates to Sleep that You Want the Public to Know?

Intervention does not happen overnight, nor does it consist of a few exercises and things are “fixed”. Therapeutic intervention should be tailored to the individual and customized to meet that individual’s needs. Sleep leads to body’s ability to optimize function, repair the body, grow the body with the release of hormones and so much more. Without appropriate sleep, one will suffer. Many times, the individual with the sleep issues do not realize there is a problem because that is their normal. Correcting the issues give them (back) the life they should be living.

Speaker: Jonathan Lown, MD

Jonathan Lown, MD, is a highly-regarded physician board certified in the areas of Sleep, Internal Medicine, and Lipidology and is a Diplomate of Sleep and Internal Medicine (ABIM). He is the Clinical Director of Delta Sleep Center of Long Island, and Co-founder of Delta Sleep International, established to disseminate knowledge about Sleep, worldwide. In addition, Dr. Lown is Assistant Professor of Medicine, Stony Brook University Medical School.

Dr. Lown is passionate about treating patients with sleep difficulties including Obstructive Sleep Apnea and was diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea himself in 2000, and has been a compliant CPAP user for over 21 years. He has also partnered with Sleep Dentists, to improve awareness and treatment alternatives for OSA and is an active member of both the AASM (American Academy of Sleep Medicine) and AADSM (American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine), and is a member of the AADSM education committee.

His lecture “The Medical Side of a Medical/Dental Problem: Sleep Apnea” will address how patients with sleep apnea can have real medical problems. While a medical history can uncover those issues, follow-up depends on understanding complex interactions between diagnoses, medications, and risk. Patients these days seek whole answers and are not satisfied with health care providers who don’t communicate. This program helps you discuss cases with your patients and avoid being known as ‘just the device provider.’ Attendees will learn about how physicians approach collaborative care and how each of us is doing what we do best, but working together, gives the patient their best chance of optimum health. Learn:

• the different roles the dentist and physician play in managing sleep-related breathing problems
• to recognize warning signs of more involved medical issues, avoiding the ‘it’s just snoring’ trap
• to present accurate, safe medical information to reassure patients about their condition and therapy

Sponsor: Kettenbach Dental

Kettenbach is an internationally positioned and well established company which for more than 75 years has attracted attention in the dental sector thanks to its inventions and product innovations. The foundations for efficient processes and successful treatment in dental practices have been established in the segments of dental impressions and restoration. Simply intelligent.

Market-leading products such as Panasil^® and Futar^®, supplemented by the in-house development of innovative materials such as Identium^®, have long simplified the day-to-day work of dentists. Product innovations in the area of restorations have also been added: for temporary and permanent restorations the Visalys^® product line is synonymous with quality at the highest level.

We are never satisfied until our customers are satisfied with us.

At Kettenbach we are dedicated to accomplishing the extraordinary. We have only one goal in mind: to develop excellent products for our customers. And this philosophy endures, as is demonstrated by the most recent generation of the owner family. Kettenbach is and will continue to be a family-run company. We think it is important to have continuity to ensure that we can consistently fulfill the high expectations of our customers. Our company depends on the individual members of our staff as well as the knowledge and effectiveness of our carefully selected management team. Our business divisions are united by strong motivation to develop products of outstanding quality for our customers.

Register at www.gnydm.com/sleep-apnea-conference