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This week’s Making Rounds spotlights Kevin Postol, a diplomate of the American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine and president-elect of the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine. Postol talked about how he treats sleep apnea and the importance of sleep when it comes to a patient’s overall health and well-being.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How would you describe your specific job to someone who doesn’t work in healthcare?
I specialize in people who have sleep apnea and temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders. I provide oral appliance therapy, a proven and effective treatment for snoring and sleep apnea. An oral appliance is a device made out of either acrylic or nylon and is custom-made to fit each patient. The appliance works by opening the area of the airway where the soft palate and tongue come together. What we’re trying to do is control the back of the airway, to open it up, to make it more rounded so the patient can breathe air on their own. With oral appliance therapy, I’m able to help my patients stop snoring, get a better night’s sleep, and improve their overall health. Patients who have their sleep apnea under control have less of a tendency to have a stroke or heart attack, and have an easier time keeping their diabetes under control.
What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?
Playing an important role in helping my patients improve their sleep and overall health. It’s all about what I can do to change somebody’s quality of their life. That’s why I got into the field of dentistry, and now sleep apnea: to help people. As we know, sleep is just as important as eating and drinking, so if I can change somebody’s sleep, I’ve changed one-third of what they have to deal with on a daily basis.
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What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?
People often assume a dentist just fills cavities and reminds you to floss. But as healthcare professionals, we also screen for and treat a number of serious diseases and disorders. When you look at the mouth, dentists can see other diseases possibly going on, especially diabetes. We screen for different types of cancers, like thyroid cancer and cancers of the head and neck area. The mouth is the entrance to the body, and we see a lot of disease processes that start in the mouth. A lot of patients don’t go to the regular physician on a regular basis, but they do go to the dentist once or twice a year. Dentists, by taking blood pressure, taking weight, and asking patients questions about their past medical history, can come up with things that they then need to go see their primary care doctor concerning.
What healthcare trend are you most optimistic about and why?
I’m thrilled by the shift I’ve seen when it comes to prioritizing quality sleep. The old school of thought was that productive people sacrifice sleep in favor of getting everything done. We are beginning to understand that’s not only untrue, it’s also unhealthy. There’s greater acceptance of the critical need for quality sleep, and how it affects our thinking, learning, connection with others, and reactions to everyday situations. Also, with wearables and other technological advances, patients are taking more control of their health, recognizing that they may have issues with the quality of their sleep, and becoming more aware that there are a variety of treatment options for sleep apnea that may be better suited to their lifestyles.