I got into sleep medicine almost by accident, at a state dental convention in 2008, sitting through two sleep physicians’ lectures in the same day. It struck me that no one was better positioned to screen for airway compromise than the clinician already staring into a patient’s mouth twice a year. Eighteen years later, that observation still shapes how I practice, and it’s why airway health is not an automatic referral out from my practice.
For most of my 22 years in practice, my sleep patients came in for oral appliance therapy, built around a home sleep test and a physician’s diagnosis, with a sleep physician signing off on every case. That referral relationship with sleep physicians has only gotten stronger as the workflow has matured, less a one-way handoff than an ongoing collaboration on a shared patient. What has changed on our side of it is the precision now available for the soft tissue component of care, particularly with Solea, the 9.3-micron CO2 laser.
Solea Sleep tightens soft palate tissue through controlled thermal remodeling, the same tissue responsible for most of the noise patients and their partners lose sleep over. Most snorers assume the problem is their septum. A CBCT usually convinces them otherwise. For my sleep apnea patients, Solea Sleep works alongside the oral appliance. Splinting the airway open is still the appliance’s job; tightening the palate simply gives it less loose tissue to work against.
I also see patients who snore when obstructive sleep apnea has been ruled out, and for that population, Solea Sleep can stand on its own. This isn’t limited to the demographic patients assume when they picture a snorer. I’ve treated thin, fit women in their thirties whose upper airway resistance was keeping them from ever reaching deep sleep, long before it would have shown up as measurable apnea, and who had been told for years that they were simply light sleepers.
Additional reading: How dentists can help overcome sleep apnea in children
The need for a frenuloplasty can also surface in the same workup since a tethered tongue and a compromised airway tend to travel together. For years, I worked with a diode laser, which chars tissue rather than cutting it cleanly, so even a careful, well-executed release could leave a few fibers behind that reattached. Solea’s 9.3-micron CO2 wavelength lets me get into the fascia itself rather than skim the surface, and the surgical site looks and heals clean and pristine instead of raw and inflamed. I pair every release with myofunctional therapy, so the tongue retrains into a forward, elevated posture instead of relapsing into the one it came in with. Patients notice it beyond the mouth: easier nasal breathing, better swallowing, and in a fair number of adults, real relief in the neck and shoulders they never connected to their tongue.
This won’t be the right expansion for every general practice, and it shouldn’t be taken on without proper training. But for practices ready and willing to build the competency, it’s a meaningful way to keep patients you’d otherwise send elsewhere, and to stay invested in their health for years to come, not just the procedure in front of you.
Editor's note: This article appeared in the July/August 2026 print edition of Dental Economics magazine. Dentists in North America are eligible for a complimentary print subscriiption. Sign up here.
