I am a prosthodontic specialist by training and for the last 25 years my clinical private practice has revolved around interdisciplinary full mouth occlusal rehabilitation, the management of patients with persistent TMD/chronic orofacial pain, as well as those referred for sleep and airway problems, for which dentistry has unique solutions.
I set up the NUS Edmund Tay Mai Hiong (ETMH) endowed fund to serve as a platform to introduce sleep medicine and airway prosthodontics to our local dental profession. One of the goals of the ETMH endowment is to engage renowned international speakers to conduct annual lectures and teaching programmes/workshops for our local professionals.
In our second year, we are privileged to have Professor Gilles Lavigne, who is the foremost authority on the subject, to discuss sleep bruxism and its convoluted relationship with sleep disordered breathing and orofacial pain. I hope you will join us for the upcoming ‘Second ETMH Distinguished Speaker Programme’ scheduled for 8 July 2018.
What I’ve learnt from managing patients with chronic pain and sleep disorders has changed entirely my practice of dentistry and how I would approach, for example, the treatment of the worn dentition.
In the lead up to our July symposium, I wish to begin dismantling the misconceptions surrounding Sleep Bruxism and the unsupported views held by some local dentists regarding its management. This is the first in a series of weekly blogs covering various aspects of clinical practice and I hope the insights I have gained over the course of my career, will encourage you to re-evaluate commonly accepted, non-evidence based dogma so prevalent in dentistry.
David K. L. Tay, BDS, MS
