North Texas Dentistry Volume 7 Issue 5 NTD 2017 ISSUE 5 DE | Page 14

practice marketing
Are You Saving Lives
in Your Practice?
A
Why you should be screening
all of your patients for sleep apnea
by Marc Fowler
n 18-year study by the University of Wisconsin
School of Medicine found that people with un-
treated sleep apnea died at a rate more than
three times that of those without apnea.
According to most estimates, approximately 20% of
adults have some level of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)
and over 80% of those cases remain undiagnosed.
So statistically, one in every five patients you see is at risk
of one or more of the co-morbidities that come with OSA.
These include stroke, heart disease, hypertension and
type 2 diabetes among several others.
And these aren’t just overweight, middle-aged men. Sleep
apnea affects people of all ages, builds and genders.
14 NORTH TEXAS DENTISTRY | www.northtexasdentistry.com
Why you are in an ideal position
to address this epidemic
There are thousands of people living near your office with
undiagnosed OSA.
As a dentist, you are well-positioned to address this need. The
average adult sees their dentist more frequently than any other
healthcare professional.
While you can’t diagnose OSA, you can help overcome one of
the major hurdles to patients being diagnosed – unwillingness
to spend the night in a sleep lab. You can coordinate a home
sleep test and team with a sleep physician who will interpret the
results and provide the diagnosis.
CPAP is considered the gold standard in OSA treatment. How-
ever, the high non-compliance rate led the American Academy
of Sleep Medicine (AASM) to recommend sleep physicians pre-
scribe oral appliances for adult patients who are intolerant
of CPAP.