Your mouth breathes.
Your body pays for it.
The airway is where whole-body health gets physical. We screen every adult patient for sleep-disordered breathing, read CBCT airway scans on the same chair, and fit Vivos® oral appliances for mild-to-moderate obstructive sleep apnea, co-managed with a board-certified sleep physician.
The mouth is a gateway.
The airway is the artery of it.
Sleep-disordered breathing is a whole-body event. When the airway narrows night after night, the cardiovascular and cognitive load accumulates quietly, the kind of quiet that takes years to name. Most people doing this don’t know. Their partner usually does.
Twelve things that
might mean something.
Tap any that sound familiar. None of them, on their own, mean you have sleep apnea. Together, they tell us whether a six-minute screen at your next visit is worth your time.
A big tongue
leaves less room.
Your airway is a soft tube with no bone to hold it open, and your tongue sits right in front of it. It’s not the only cause, because the jaw and palate matter too. But it’s one we can see, so we look at it.
Muscles hold it
forward.
Tongue muscles keep the tongue forward, so the tube stays open.
Those muscles
ease off.
Their activity drops as you fall asleep, and the tongue has less help holding its place.
Less room
behind it.
The airway can narrow or close in sleep. Studies find big tongues, and wavy tongue edges, more often in people with sleep apnea. They’re clues, not proof.
Four steps,
two of them at home.
The screen is short. The home test is short. The plan is built with your sleep physician, not around them. If an oral appliance is appropriate, we fit it. If the picture is more complex, we refer, and stay involved.
Airway screen.
At any new-patient or hygiene visit. Mallampati, neck circumference, tongue size and position, jaw classification, plus an Epworth sleepiness score. Six minutes total.
CBCT + scan.
A 3D cone-beam captures the actual airway from soft palate down through the hypopharynx. We measure the narrowest cross-section in mm².
Home sleep test.
A small pulse-ox + cannula device you take home for one night. Returns AHI, oxygen desat index, and event type. Read by a board-certified sleep physician.
Plan together.
If it's mild or moderate, an oral appliance is often the answer. If it's severe, we refer for CPAP or surgical consult, and still help with the appliance for adjunct nights.
An appliance that
works on the cause.
Dr. Goh is a certified Vivos® provider. Unlike a static snore guard, Vivos® is a guided appliance-based system that works gradually over months to address the shape of the airway itself, not just the night-by-night noise. Many patients who complete the protocol experience measurable improvement in their AHI. Once your sleep study comes back, Dr. Goh will walk through what that means for you specifically.
Untreated sleep apnea isn’t
a snoring problem.
It’s a slow cardiovascular and cognitive event. Three of the most consistent findings in the literature, plain.
Cardiovascular
event risk.
Compared with non-apneic patients in long-term observational cohorts. Hypertension, atrial fibrillation, and heart failure all track with severity.
Lost
memory life.
Severe untreated OSA is associated with earlier cognitive decline. Hypoxia + fragmented sleep both contribute. Treatment slows the curve.
Undiagnosed
U.S. adults.
American Academy of Sleep Medicine estimate. Most have never had an airway screen. Most could be screened at a dental visit they’re already attending.
Figures cited from published cohort literature and AAS prevalence estimates. Not a substitute for individual diagnosis.
Your sleep MD
reads it. We fit it.
We don’t diagnose sleep apnea on our own. We screen, refer, test in your home, and deliver the appliance. The diagnosis and the sleep study itself stay with a board-certified sleep physician.
Screen
+ refer.
Airway screen, CBCT, and a sleep-physician referral. We send your imaging and findings ahead.
Diagnose
+ stage.
Home or in-lab sleep study, scored by the physician. They tell us mild, moderate, or severe.
Fit
+ titrate.
Vivos® appliance, staged follow-up visits, post-treatment sleep study to confirm it’s working.
Six minutes
could change the decade.
An airway screen takes longer to describe than to do. We fold it into any visit: new patient, hygiene, or a stand-alone sixty-minute visit. If the oral-systemic side of your health is what drew you here, that conversation belongs in the same room. Serving Henderson, Las Vegas, Summerlin, and Anthem.