- Good day, guys, today I'm going to be showing you
an alternative to CPAP therapy that's just as effective,
but a little bit more enjoyable and more convenient to use.
It's called a Mandibular Advancement Device,
or MAD for short, and it works by keeping your jaw
in a forward position while you sleep,
stopping it collapsing on your upper airway.
All right, check it out.
- So when a patient is unable to tolerate CPAP,
we talk to them about Continuous Open Airway Therapy,
which achieves the same goal as CPAP,
just to a different mechanism.
CPAP pressurizes the upper airway
and moves the tissues apart.
COAT actually moves the lower jaw forward,
opens up the airway mechanically,
and allows the airway to remain open through the night.
Patients generally prefer
Continuous Open Airway Therapy to CPAP,
and generally use it for longer number of hours every night.
- Now there's a large number of companies
that manufacture these oral appliances, these MAD's,
and from my personal experience,
and the feedback that I've got from patients,
the majority of them just don't work, all right,
they're cheap, nasty gimmicks.
The ones you find on eBay and Amazon, those $20 mouth guards
are not going to do anything for you, all right,
so don't waste your money on them.
The industry pioneers in this field
and the best in the business is a company founded
right here in Australia, called SomnoMed.
And from humble beginnings,
they now operate in over 25 countries around the globe,
and they successfully treated over 500,000 patients.
So this stuff here works,
This is Aussie innovation at its very best.
So let's have a closeup look
at one of their most popular models, the Avant,
and I'll discuss the features.
All right, so here's a little closeup for you all.
You can see here, it has this little strap here,
this polyamide strap.
And the way you titrate these devices,
so in terms of extending the bottom part forward,
sort of treat your snoring and sleep apnea,
is the straps come in different sizes.
So the shorter they get, they get shorter by one millimeter,
and that extends it even further out this way.
They've also got like a bit of lateral movement to them,
you can see there,
so you do have a little bit of movement with your jaw.
And this section on the outside is quite a hard material,
it's a resin, orthodontic resin,
but on the inside here where your teeth are,
it's actually much softer.
They've got this B-flex material on the inside,
which makes it quite soft.
So you end up with this really cool durable device
that you can titrate,
So if you're snoring a bit, you put on a shorter strap,
it'll move your jaw, your bottom jaw forward a little bit,
and then that'll, that's how you titrate them.
Is the process difficult to have one fitted?
No, it's very easy.
You book in to see a SomnoMed trained dentist,
who's gonna take some dental impressions,
and a bite registration.
Or maybe they'll do like an intraoral scan
of your teeth and mouth, a 3D scan,
and then they upload all that information to SomnoMed.
And once SomnoMed has that information,
the manufacturing process is all digital, all right?
It's computer aided design and manufacturing,
and the end result is this precision mill device
that's comfortable, durable, and tailor-made
specifically for your teeth and mouth.
Now let's discuss some of the pros and cons
of these old devices when compared
with traditional CPAP Therapy,
starting with the good stuff, the pros.
Number one, you no longer have to wear one of these,
CPAP mask, no more Darth Vader.
(Heavy breathing)
And for those of you on the dating scene,
especially the young individuals,
not when you're old and married like me,
I don't care, clearly.
But when you're young and you're dating,
it's quite embarrassing when you're on CPAP Therapy,
you don't really want to bring someone home
from a date, you know, and them this,
it's not very sexy, is it?
I would much prefer to be wearing a little mouth guard.
you know, this stops me snoring,
gives me a good night's sleep,
than introducing them to old Mad Max over here, all right?
So that's an important point.
Number two, there's no noise as well.
(heavy breathing)
So, this is silent, whereas the CPAP machines,
although they're getting better,
you've still got the machine noise,
you've still got the mask leak noise.
They're still quite noisy for some of you,
especially if you're on those higher pressures.
Number three, easy to sleep with.
You know, there's no tubing,
you're not connected to anything,
you can just move around as you like in bed.
You can sleep on your tummy, on your back, on your side,
and you can move freely throughout the night,
so that's pretty cool.
Number four, no CPAP side effects.
So you don't have all those side effects
that I'm always talking about, and there's a lot of them.
Your dry eyes, your dry mouth,
your air in tummy, aerophagia.
Now the list goes on, I've done a number of videos on them,
but there's a lot of side effects
that come with CPAP Therapy.
Where are we up to, four?
The compliance rates.
So, CPAP compliance, which is,
how well people adapt to the therapy,
or how well people take to the therapy is pretty low,
it's about 60%.
So basically one in three of you will fail at CPAP Therapy
where these old devices it's much, much higher.
And I think that's just 'cause it's easy to sleep with
at the end of the day.
Number five, and one of my favorites, portability.
So easy to travel with these devices,
there's no power as well,
so if someone who's into your camping,
it's much easier to take this sort of device
than worrying about batteries and all the other stuff
that goes along with CPAP machines,
or packing it all up into the bag
when you're going on a plane.
And last of all,
and one of the most important things from my perspective,
is that compared with CPAP Therapy,
they're equally as effective
in treating mild to moderate sleep apnea, OSA.
And there's a number of independent studies
that I'm gonna put in the description of the video,
where you can check out that information.
And now for the cons,
and these include things like sore jaw, tooth pain,
excess drool, and one of the most serious I think,
is potential changes to your bite,
so that is sort of how your teeth lineup.
Because your jaw is sort of held in this forward position
for long periods of time,
it has potential to sort of make changes to your bite,
but your dentist is going to talk you through that,
and there are some ways to mitigate that as well.
Another downside is the cost, these are quite expensive.
Whenever you involve dentists in the manufacturing process,
you know you're going to be up for a bit of coin,
and also there's no real government subsidy, but yeah, look,
if you've got private insurance here in Australia,
you're gonna be able to get a rebate on them
of between five to $700.
But in comparison to CPAP,
they're around the same sort of price.
Thanks for watching guys,
I've put a bunch of useful information
in the description of the video,
so if you want to learn a little bit more
about these fantastic alternative CPAP Therapy,
then make sure you go and check that out.
Have a great day, see you soon, bye.
(romantic music playing)