Interdisciplinary Pediatric Treatment
February 1, 2024
In a uniquely interdisciplinary approach, Dr. Bockow's treatment of her pediatric patients often involves the expertise of the child's sleep physician, ENT, myofunctional therapist, restorative dentist, pediatric dentist, and others. Learn more about how each discipline is incorporated throughout the child’s treatment timeline in this brief lecture clip.
Dr. Rebecca Bockow is a dual-trained board-certified orthodontist and periodontist – one of only a handful in the country. She lectures nationally on periodontics, orthodontics, interdisciplinary orthodontics, airway, and skeletal growth and development.
” Now, in this airway world, our interdisciplinary team has really expanded. So, we have sleep physicians, ENTs, myofunctional therapists, restorative dentists, pediatric dentists. We have diet counseling. We have a whole host of specialists that we work with.
” So, we all do our in-office exam, OHI, caries control, diet counseling, identifying etiology. In our office we do our exam, take our x-ray, we refer to sleep medicine, we refer to myofunctional therapy, we refer to ENT. We all try to identify the etiologies behind the malocclusion that we see in our chair. The patient we see in our chair, really taking a good health history. We refer to a sleep study as needed. We want to get that diagnosis.
” We do a myofunctional therapy evaluation. We assess tongue mobility. We assess their ability to breath with lips together through their nose.
” ENT does an evaluation, we look at tonsils, adenoids. We all collect our records. Orthodontically, we start to design our mechanics. We do a lot of team treatment planning… who comes first, what order do we approach with each patient?
” Many times, our care for these kids includes bimaxillary expansion (protraction as needed), and we’ll have tonsils and adenoids out as needed. After expansion… after expansion and protraction is when we start myofunctional therapy and tongue tie release, because we really want to get full range of motion with that new skeletal position. Then we monitor growth and development over time, and then we do a follow up sleep study and continue to screen over time.”
Dr. Bockow loves to create beautiful smiles for her patients, setting them up for a lifetime of dental and airway health.
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