Get a Custom Sleep Apnea Appliance at Bilski Family Dentistry

Get a Custom Sleep Apnea
Appliance at Bilski Family Dentistry

Bilski Family Dentistry has partnered with Virteom to engage our patients and
users about our dentistry practice and services. In our video series, Jacqui
and Dr. Thomas Bilski talk about services we offer at our practice. Today,
we’re going to talk about sleep apnea. Watch or read the
transcription below!

We Work with Your Physician to Make the Sleep
Appliance

Sleep
apnea affects a lot of people and it can be
expensive with biPAPs, CPAPs and other machinery. We have alternative options
that work well and are more cost effective for our patients.

We accomplish this by working with the physicians. We’re
not just out there being cowboys, making sleep appliances and pretending to
be a physician, we’re not advanced. What we can do from in our
practice is actually make appliances in conjunction with a
physician.

Various Sleep Appliances for Sleep Apnea

You go to your physician and they tell you if you have sleep
apnea, mild to moderate, and you’re not going to wear your CPAP. It
just scares you. We can take some molds or images with a camera, make models,
and make an appliance that repositions your lower jaw forward and opens the
jaw a little bit like CPR.

The image above shows our value appliance. It’s less
costly and we do a lot of these because of it’s
cost-effectiveness. The upgraded appliance is a little different
(see it in the video above at 1:05). It’s a little more costly and
it’s an upper and lower appliance (separate) that are together. Then
there’s little adjustments we make on the appliance and
that’s called titration.

The Difference in the Value Appliance is Titration

With the value appliance, we do not titrate. We give it to you
straight to try and see if we get some results. You’ll take those
results back to your physician. With the upgraded appliance, that is titrated,
you will do another sleep test. If you have a sleep partner, ask the partner,
“Hey, Dr. Bilski moved it (titrate) into this position, have I
stopped snoring?” We stop the treatment if it
works.

If it doesn’t work, we keep moving forward until we get
it right. Titration is actually measuring and adjusting it for their mouth to
see what works and what doesn’t. It’s more clinical, but we
can test a measure and we know if it’s working or not. Comparing that
to the value appliance, which may not work without the ability to
titrate.

The reason we do so many value appliances is that we
don’t mind starting out with that. It may work for you without
adjustments.

Tested by Dr. Bilski Himself

Dr. Bilski actually tests these models on himself. Everything that
goes in a patient’s mouth is tested on Dr. Bilski. He doesn’t
need a sleep apnea appliance, but he does make the appliances. This way, he
can talk to the patient from experience because he know how it feels from
having tested it.

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Schedule
your appointment today or contact
us for more information.