Sleep Disorders

Hello everybody. Dr. Ko here. Thank you for visiting our website. I would like to take the next couple of minutes to go over with you very quickly the workflow of treating, breathing, and sleep for adults in our office. Most people come to us because they have a previous diagnosis or they’re suspecting that they had sleep apnea. Now we don’t like to take their words for it, so we typically would put people through a test. This is a type three take home device called sleep image. And you wear this little ring that’s paired to your phone and the data really gets uploaded onto the cloud. So with this data and with imaging, we would customize a treatment for you. What we do a lot in our office is creating space. It’s expansion. A lot of people who drive from very far to come to see us because we’re really known for expanding the space for the palette and for the tongue. There are times we don’t use that tool. There are times when we reposition the mandible forward and in doing so the tongue goes forward with it. So that actually helps with people who have sleep apnea. So Mandibular advanced device is one tool we use. We don’t use this a lot. Our office is more known for expansion, but this is a tool that we do have. Now, other tools we have is, along with Invisalign and also a device called Vivos, DNA, we’re able to actually influence the shape of the palate and also change the circumference where the teeth land. And you can kind of see this is one of the patients we treated who had moderate sleep apnea after expansion with Vivos and Invisalign. Now the teeth has room to fit in without crowding and the shape of the palate is different as a result. Sleep apnea now has went from mild to none. Another tool we would use is called Mar P. The full acronym is Mini Implant Assisted Rapid Pal Expander. So same thing. This is really about creating more space for the tongue. And then typically when we create more space for the tongue to function in, we work with local myofunctional therapists to train the tongue to function that bigger space. And then afterwards we will release the tongue with our CO2 laser. All the workflow really is done in office.
We have many, many years of experience and patients do come from all over the place to come to see us for this kind of treatment. So I hope this video is helpful. If you have any questions, please do call the office and we’ll be happy to actually talk to you and customize the treatment for you.