Therapeutic Pathway for Orthodontic Intervention

OSA is a progressive chronic disease, which is hard to be completely cured. OSA has multifactorial pathophysiology and is mostly accompanied by comorbidities; thus, interdisciplinary management should be considered for better treatment. Over 30 years, dentists have been involved in the collaborative evaluation and treatment of patients with OSA, just being regarded as a supportive practitioner managing the oral appliances or performing the skeletal surgery. Therefore, OSA patients were referred to the dentists only when the positive airway pressure (PAP) was intolerant or the soft-tissue ENT surgeries failed. Nowadays, orthodontists are in place of determining when to intervene and how to treat the OSA patients based on the differential diagnosis of the OSA phenotype and the craniofacial phenotype. Considering that the final key to treat the OSA patients includes permanent craniofacial skeletal modification or reconstruction, sleep specialists anticipate orthodontists’ critical roles within the interdisciplinary approach.