Comparing Two Mandibular Positioning Techniques for Dental Sleep Appliances

Obstructive sleep apnea is a medical condition where a person has great difficulty with breathing, or stops breathing all together, while asleep. This is a medical condition for which one of the current standard treatments is the use of a custom-made dental appliance to help hold the person's airway open while asleep so that the person does not suffocate while sleeping. Current methodology within dentistry is to position the mandible based on the person's maximum ability to position their mandible forward as the starting point and then slowly move the bottom jaw forward as necessary. Recent literature has shown that different mandibular positioning techniques may require less protrusion, less titrations, and potentially decreased side effects compared with the traditional protrusive techniques. One of the most promising techniques involves the use of speech to determine mandibular position. This technique would not require that a patient place their jaw outside of their normal functional range and could potentially decrease the face pain/jaw joint problems commonly associated with the use of oral sleep appliances for the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea. The use of speech as the determinant for where to position the mandible is important for muscular balance. Minimal research has been done in this area, with most studies being either retrospective or confounded by other variables. This will be the first prospective study that directly compares the use of speech vs an anterior protrusive technique for mandibular positioning.