Nancy Addy, DDS

I am a continuing ed junkie. I'm always reading about things. One day I read this little article about help your patient quit snoring. I though, "That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard of. A dentist helping a patient not to snore?" A couple of weeks later, one of my patients came in and I said, "Is there anything else I can help you with?" He said, "Yeah doc. Can you help me quit snoring?" I said, "I just read about this. Let's try it."

We tried it on him and a couple of weeks later, after I had put it in, we called back and he said, "Doc, you're a miracle worker. You hear me? A miracle worker." I thought, "This is interesting." He started referring aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers to me and all of a sudden I'm making these appliances for what I thought was just snoring.

Then there was this one patient who I sent the information into the lab, and the lab called me back and said, "We can't do it." I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "There's not enough under-cut." Which may not mean too much to someone who's not in the dental world, but to me that meant a lot. I said, "Gee, I wonder what I do now." He said, "Oh, don't worry. Just bring the cast to the meeting." I said, "What meeting?" He said, "Yeah right. I'll see you at the meeting." I said, "I don't know what you're talking about." He said, "The American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine." I said, "I've never heard of it."

There was utter silence on the other end of the phone. He said, "You're making these appliances and you've never heard of that?" I said, "No." He said, "You need to be there." That was, I think, on a Wednesday. I cancelled all my patients on Thursday, flew out to Seattle, and for the first time in my life I heard the word obstructive sleep apnea. I had never heard of that. I just assumed people were snoring. I'm sitting, and I'm sure everyone in the room could hear my heart beating, because people could die.

Once I realized the severity, or how important snoring is as in indicator for people who may potentially have obstructive sleep apnea, it completely changed my path. I did all kinds of study. At that time, when I first started doing this, very few people did it. Now, in the United States, there are only maybe two hundred and seventy of us who are board certified and only thirty of us whose offices are site accredited in the United States.

I went through all of this studying because I found out I can really help people. Often times the first line of treatments in oral appliance, excuse me, a CPAP and patients, if they like it and it works great, it's fabulous. If they don't like it, it's not so good for them. What I do is make this appliance. Its changed people's lives. It's improved people's marriages. It's a wonderful area to be in and it's so fun to come to work every day.