Are you considering the airway in your treatment planning?
Could centric relation (CR) be compromising your patient’s breathing?
When you open the vertical dimension, are you making the airway better—or worse?
Welcome to another AES 2026 series episode, this time with LEGEND Dr. Jeff Rouse as he joins Jaz in this eye-opening episode to explore how airway, aesthetics, and function are deeply interconnected—especially in prosthodontics.
They discuss key clinical scenarios like vertical dimension changes, examining how your choices may impact the airway—sometimes in ways you didn’t expect. With practical insights and examples, this episode will help you make smarter, airway-conscious decisions that elevate both your functional and aesthetic outcomes.
https://youtu.be/-Ut-qme7VcgWatch PDP229 on YoutubeProtrusive Dental Pearl: Plan your breaks 12 months in advance to avoid burnout and ensure quality time with your loved ones. Prioritize rest and connection before reaching exhaustion—your body, mind, and heart will thank you.
Need to Read it? Check out the Full Episode Transcript below!
Key Takeaways
Highlights of this patient:
Explore the world of sleep disordered breathing with Prof. Ama Johal in PDP033: “Airway – Dentistry’s Elephant in the Room.”
???? Join the world’s leading organization dedicated to occlusion, temporomandibular disorders (TMD), and restorative excellence — the American Equilibration Society (AES).
????️ AES Annual Meeting 2026 – “The Evolution of the Oral Physician”???? February 18–19, 2026 · Chicago, IllinoisDon’t miss Dr. Jeff Rouse as featured speaker, presenting on “Dental Wear Patterns Of The Airway Patient”
???? Learn more with Dr. Jeff Rouse on The Spear Education Online
This episode is eligible for 1 CE credit via the quiz on Protrusive Guidance.
This episode meets GDC Outcomes A, B and C.
AGD Subject Code: 730 ORAL MEDICINE, ORAL DIAGNOSIS, ORAL PATHOLOGY (Sleep medicine)
Aim: To deepen clinicians’ understanding of airway prosthodontics and empower them to recognize airway-related dental issues across all age groups.
Dentists will be able to –
Differentiate between anatomical airway dysfunction and sleep-disordered breathing, and understand the unique role of dentistry in addressing each.
Explain the principles of Airway Prosthodontics, including the significance of tooth position in facial space and its impact on breathing.
Recognize signs of airway compromise in both pediatric and adult patients, including atypical wear patterns, bruxism, reflux, and chronic fatigue.
Click below for full episode transcript:Teaser: They don't want us playing in that world either. They don't. Their world is completely different than ours. And you as a dentist, you don't want to be in that world. It's an ugly, ugly world and most physicians would love to be dentists nowadays, 'cause we have so much more freedom to change and to act and to care for our patients than they do. Most people don't know what they don't know. They just call it normal.Teaser:A woman I was visiting with earlier today had had orthognathic surgery and she said, I didn’t really realize that I never was able to breathe and I never slept until I had the surgery done. People that are constricted in their bites like this, their maxillas are constricted.
And if their maxillas are constricted and their nasal cavities constricted, they can’t breathe well through their nose. And so if you go from giving a small piece of cheese or beef jerky or a peanut to chew, they can manage their airway, have ’em bite into a sandwich with a bunch of bread and a bunch of stuff in it. They can’t, so their chewing cycle will move forward and they’ll hit their front.
For me, airway is just established the aesthetic position of the teeth first and the functional position of the teeth. If you get those things normalized, then we help the patient normalize what they do, which is close the mouth and breathe through their nose.
That’s dentistry and the success of that treatment is does the patient have a beautiful smile and a great bite? That’s success. Not did I reduce the apnea level? We’re treating 26 month old as the youngest I’ve ever heard, done Invisalign first to expand, start expansion early, but at four you can start to see if you’re leaving them in a constricted pediatric arch that the permanent teeth are gonna erupt outside of the housing of the bone. So the orthodontist never moved the teeth outta the bone. They were never in the bone to begin with.
Jaz’s Introduction:How does the airway relate to aesthetics and function? Interesting concept ’cause we think about aesthetics, we think about function, but are we necessarily thinking about the airway when it comes to our treatment planning?
Related to this is a scenario like, let’s think of complete dentures. When we deliver complete dentures, the joint position that we usually select is centric relation or seated condyle position. Now the question is, is this position adversely affecting their airway? i.e. by moving their condyles in into centric relation, which usually means they’re moving their jaw a little bit further back. Is that necessarily worsening their airway?
Well, we answered that in this episode. And how about when we’re opening someone’s bite? Well, in prosthodontics, when we open someone’s bite, there are some scenarios where you are at risk of making the airway worse and other scenarios where you’re probably not gonna make the airway worse.
And you’ll learn this episode exactly what those two distinctions are. I’m joined today by the Dr. Jeff Rouse absolute giant in our profession. What a lovely guy he is. Author of one of the best dentistry textbooks there are Global Diagnosis. He’s also a very prominent educator with spear education and the impact this man has made in airway and dentistry and prosthodontics is just absolutely amazing.
So it’s real privilege to host him today as part of our AES takeover. See, Jeff Rouse is one of the speakers at the AES Conference, 2026 in February, and that will be held in Chicago. And we’re trying to shine a light on this conference because it’s based on occlusion, right? It’s related to occlusion, but it’s so much more than occlusion.
In fact, the theme of the AES conference next year is the Evolution of the Oral Physician. Let me say that again. The Evolution of the Oral Physician. So it really looks more than just the occlusion. When I attended a few years back, they really are a comprehensive, holistic group that brings together all the occlusion camps and me and Mahmoud Ibrahim, have the privilege of being able to speak there.
But we are a small piece of it. You know, some of these giants, like Dania Tamimi that we had on previously, Lukasz Lassman, Jeff Rouse, who you’ll hear from today, is gonna make a really great conference. We’re shining a light, so check out aes-tmj.org, that’s aes-tmj.org to learn more about this conference in Feb 2026.
Hello, Protruserati. I’m Jaz Gulati and welcome back to your favorite dental podcast. Every PDP episode, I give you a Protrusive Dental Pearl, and quite often the pearl I give depends on my mood and my context and what I’ve been doing that day or the ...