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Participation in competitive sports at all levels, from youth to adult leagues has grown quite steadily over recent years.  With this growth, we have seen a commensurate increase in the number of injuries.  In fact, 10-20% of all sports related injuries are maxillofacial injuries according to the American Dental Association.  To protect your patient’s mouth we suggest everyone involved in playing competitive sports wear a mouthguard.

It is easy to assume mouthguards are only necessary if you are playing a contact sport. People understand if you are playing soccer, basketball, football, or ice hockey you need a mouthguard. But it is just as important to wear a mouthguard when you…

Some patients simply cannot tolerate having their mandible brought forward. For others, such as a patient who already is a skeletal class lll, they would only be made more prognathic. Luckily there are alternatives to these posture forwarding appliances.

The following appliances work by acting directly on the tongue to prevent it from dropping back into the airway:

THE FULL BREATH SOLUTION®The FBS has an adjustable extension that reaches back and down towards the posterior aspect of the tongue. It is designed in such a manner that when the tongue drops back into the airway during sleep it makes contact with this extension. This contact stimulates the tongue to come forward while eliminating…

If you’re providing sleep appliances to your patients, you should also be including a Good Morning Positioner as a support companion for each and every one.

A mandibular advancement sleep device acts to push the patient’s mandible forward and maintain an open airway during sleep. While this can lead to a good night’s sleep, (and a much quieter night for the patient’s partner), it may also affect the patient’s bite position.

The Good Morning Positioner helps patients to easily re-establish their correct bite pattern each morning. The patient inserts and wears it for a few minutes each morning to help re-align their upper and lower arches into a neutral position.

Dentists, we know what you do is extremely important. Every day you protect your patients’ teeth, eliminate severe TMJ pain, and give them a beautiful white smile. You may also save their lives!

Dentists are on the front line of screening patients for oral cancer. Though oral cancer doesn’t get as much attention as other forms of cancer, it is still a very real and very deadly disease. According to the Oral Cancer Foundation, in 2014 alone over 40,000 Americans were diagnosed with oral cancer and over 8,000 Americans succumbed to the disease.

Catching oral cancer early is paramount to a successful outcome. Your average person doesn’t know to look for new growths and discolored areas in the mouth or to make the connection that…

The Rick-A-Nator is truly the orthodontists’ best friend. This popularly used, simple fixed appliance consists of a maxillary anterior inclined plane placed on a lingual wire attached to molar bands. It can drastically improve deep overbites, improve a patient’s profile, and improve TMJ symptoms.

In some cases, you may see very young patients with deep overbites. Children aged four to six often present compliance issues. They don’t like…

Without a viable targeted marketing message in place and in action, no one will ever know about your newly expanded services. Marketing impacts every aspect of your success in dental sleep medicine and your overall practice, as well.

Remember… there is a very high probability that sleep patients already exist in your current practice.

Marketing and educational materials that introduce these patients to the risks and symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea are in essence creating new patients for your practice. Your new/existing converts to sleep therapy will, in turn, refer your sleep services to those within their influence range. Finally, those referrals will bring with them a full range of general dentistry needs to…

Your Patients Will Think You Are The Most Awesome Dentist Ever With Custom Appliance Designs

We decorate our rooms, our desks at work, our cars, and even our own skin. Each one of us is an individual and we love to express our individualism any chance we get, even in our mouths! That’s why custom appliance designs can be such a huge hit at your dental practice. No one loves the thought of wearing a retainer for the next few months or even years, but the process can be a lot more enjoyable if your patients can pick from a wide variety of colors and designs.

At Space Maintainers Laboratories, we offer some really cool appliance colors and designs that will let your patients’ personalities shine. Maybe your feel-good patients will choose the…

If you, and/or the members of your dental group intend to receive payment through some method other than direct fee-for-service, it is important to understand when it comes to Sleep Medicine, you and your dental group are treating a medical problem and must bill according to established medical protocols.

Because most dental practice management software applications do not handle medical billing properly, SML® has established preferred partnerships that supply turnkey eligibility verification, billing and medical reimbursement to insure timely submission and payment of medical claims. We have done this because we believe that unless it is your intention to convert your practice to one that only provides sleep therapy you…

We live in the digital age, and even if your dental office has been analogue for years, it’s past time to make the switch to digital. You already know that converting your analogue x-rays and files make it much easier and swifter for your administrative assistants and dental techs to pull patient files. Digital also allows you to efficiently review changes in patients…and to transfer and receive files to and from other sources.

The only potential “glitch” resulting from digitizing your files occurs in the area of labor commitment. Digitizing can prove time-consuming and does effectively take employees assigned to the task out of circulation. We know that you want to keep your costs down. We know you may not be able…

After wearing a mandibular advancement sleep appliance overnight, patients frequently find it difficult to bite back into their normal occlusion. This bite shift rarely returns to its normal position without some assistance. To help re-establish a normal bite we recommend the use of a repositioning device. This device is typically constructed to replicate the patient’s normal occlusal pattern and mandibular position and should be used every morning after wearing an advancement appliance.

THE GOOD MORNING…