Innovation
How I Built My Sleep Practice Maria Sokolina
M
any years ago, I became so excited about the topic of dental sleep that I lost my own sleep. For me, dental sleep was the answer to many puzzles I tried to solve while working as a general dentist. I was very scared that patients would break my dental restorations, my orthodontic treatments would relapse, and my implants would fail. I kept digging and digging to answer the question: why do people grind their teeth? All of a sudden, I learned through my continuing education courses that the cause was sleep and breathing disorders. I took another Sleep Residency Program in Tufts with Dr. Leopoldo Correa, and after completion, I was ready to start helping my sleep-deprived patients. Although I was helping patients get confident smiles, I felt like I wasn’t making a difference in their lives. As my course recommended, I started identifying Sleep Apnea patients in my practice and sending them to their primary care physicians for sleep studies. As any good observant dentist, I saw the signs of sleep and breathing disorders in my patients’ mouths very clearly. Besides the fact that I asked my patients questions about their sleep and snoring, I loaded the app Snore Lab on their phones and scheduled follow-up appointments to review the results the app provided. Patients usually inquired about what the results should be. “There is no specific number I can give you. It depends on your sleeping condition, air conditioner, your partner’s snoring...” I usually listen to the results collected from three nights on Snore Lab with the patient.
18 Fall 2024 Dental Entrepreneur
I can’t say that I have a success rate of convincing all my patients about the necessity of a sleep evaluation. Fifty percent of patients were surprised that a dentist, someone they only see as a tooth doctor, could offer recommendations and suggestions about something other than teeth. But the other fifty percent of my patients listened and went back to their PCP to inquire about a sleep study. I scheduled appointments to review the sleep study results with them after one month, but no one kept that appointment. I felt deeply disappointed. I called some patients myself and was very surprised to learn that patients who went to their PCP had two different outcomes. Some PCPs simply said to them that they were not overweight and did not have sleep apnea, despite the oral signs I showed the patients that raised my suspicion. The other group that went to their PCP was referred to a sleep physician, had a sleep study done, and was offered a CPAP machine. This happened despite the fact that the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends Oral Appliance Therapy for patients with mild to moderate sleep apnea. I realized that if I kept this strategy, my dental sleep practice would never happen. I needed to start building relationships with sleep doctors. I have to admit that this was the beginning of a very frustrating chapter in my life called Cold Calls. Here are the lessons I learned:
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