Obstructive Sleep Apnea: The Medical/Dental Connection

An estimated 25 million adults in the U.S. suffer from obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing stops and starts repeatedly due to throat muscles relaxing and blocking the airway. For the last 30 years, the standard of care has been continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines, and CPAP continues to be the recommended first-line treatment because it is so highly effective. But for patients with mild to moderate OSA who can’t or won’t use CPAP, oral appliances have proven to be a viable option and promise to be a continued growth area. In fact, the U.S. oral appliance market is anticipated to double by 2020.⁺

While that’s a huge opportunity for dentists and labs alike, there are numerous complexities in the market caused primarily by the fact that OSA is a medical condition and therefore must be diagnosed and managed by a physician. This means that oral appliance therapy for OSA requires a multi-disciplinary,...