About the lecture

Title: "The Whole Sleep Patient: Dental Sleep Medicine Through an Oral-Systemic Lens"

Description:

Dental sleep medicine is often reduced to a sleep study, a severity score, and a treatment device. But the sleep patient is far more complex.

During sleep, airway function, breathing route, salivary flow, the oral environment, periodontal health, medications, weight, systemic physiology, and other factors can intersect in ways that influence both what clinicians notice and what happens next.

This one-hour program introduces an oral-systemic lens for understanding the whole sleep patient. Participants will explore what changes during the night, how oral and systemic findings can influence treatment selection and timing, and why successful sleep care requires more than simply initiating therapy.

The program will also examine how the clinical picture can change over time, including changes in symptoms, weight, medications, periodontal status, occlusion, and treatment response, and why ongoing verification and reassessment matter.

Designed for an interdisciplinary audience, this course helps medical and dental professionals better understand the information each discipline may contribute to the recognition, treatment, and long-term management of patients with sleep-disordered breathing.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe how sleep changes airway function, breathing route, salivary flow, and the oral environment, and identify findings that may raise suspicion for sleep-disordered breathing without establishing a diagnosis.
• Explain how oral, periodontal, airway, medical, medication, and weight-related factors can influence treatment selection and timing for the sleep patient.
• Identify factors that may make oral appliance therapy appropriate now, appropriate later, or inappropriate, and recognize when additional medical or dental evaluation is needed.
• Describe how treatment effectiveness should be verified and what changes over time, including symptoms, weight, medications, periodontal status, and occlusion, may prompt reassessment.
  

Practical Applications:

• Apply an oral-systemic approach to recognize clinical findings that may warrant further evaluation for sleep-disordered breathing.
• Use oral, periodontal, medical, medication, airway, and weight-related factors to support appropriate sleep treatment planning and interdisciplinary referrals.
• Incorporate ongoing verification and reassessment into sleep care by monitoring changes in symptoms, health status, medications, periodontal health, occlusion, and treatment response.

Speaker Bio: 

Dr. Kathleen Carson is an airway-centric and oral-systemic dentist, educator, consultant, author, podcast co-host, and founder of Oral-Vitality™ and Oral-Vitality Products, LLC. With more than 20 years of experience in integrative, patient-centered care, she focuses on identifying oral-systemic contributors to chronic inflammatory conditions and systemic dysfunction across microbial, inflammatory, airway and sleep, functional, salivary and biochemical, and structural domains.

Through Oral-Vitality™, Dr. Carson provides advanced oral-systemic assessment, diagnostics, education, and interdisciplinary care coordination, connecting oral health, airway function, sleep, inflammation, microbial patterns, and whole-body wellness.

With Dr. Ellie Campbell, she co-hosts two podcasts: Vital Signs & Smile Lines, a professional show on oral-systemic health, airway function, and collaborative care, and Sleep, Sex, and Senility, a public-facing show that makes these topics accessible to everyday listeners. She is also preparing a forthcoming book on the mouth as a gateway to whole-body health.

A Diplomate of the American Sleep and Breathing Academy and a Fellow of both the International Association of Physiologic Aesthetics and the Buteyko Breathing & Integrative Breathing Foundations, Dr. Carson is dedicated to advancing collaborative, root-cause oral-systemic care.