Dr. Klein Discusses the Importance of Airway Treatment in Your Dental Practice

Below, we’ve compiled the key points discussed in the Jameson Files Episode 149. To enjoy the full episode you can watch on YouTube or listen to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify.

Carrie:

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Jameson Files. I’m your host, Carrie Weber. Thank you so much for being a part of our Jameson Files community, and for watching or listening wherever you connect to us, right here on our pod podcast. We are recording live once again at the ADA annual meeting, Smile Con 2022 in Houston, Texas. And I am over-the-moon thrilled to have a special guest with us for this episode, Jameson client and friend, Dr. Cassie Klein. Dr. Klein, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Kassi Klein:

Of course. It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Carrie:

I’m excited to talk to you. Dr. Klein is from the Houston area, Spring, Texas, not too far from where we’re sitting right now. You are native to the great state of Texas, went to undergrad at Texas Tech, and then got your DDS from the University of Texas School of Dentistry in Houston. Correct? 

Dr. Kassi Klein:

That’s right. 

Dr. Klein’s Early Days in Dentistry

Carrie:

Since graduating, you have an amazing practice where you are starting to really expand your services and clarify a vision for the treatment you want to provide and the practice that you have. And that’s been a journey for you, so I want to talk about that journey a little bit and share that story, but then also talk specifically about your passion for airway treatment for your patient family. So we’ll definitely want to get into that later, but to start, Dr. Kline, I’d love for you to share a little bit about what led you to dentistry and to where you are today.

Dr. Kassi Klein:

It’s so funny. People always ask me that and I never feel like I have the perfect answer for that.  Maybe dentistry found me; maybe I found it. Somewhere along the line, I realized I loved looking at people’s teeth; I love people’s smiles. That’s kind of my focal point when I talk to somebody, and literally one day I was sitting there and decided that I should be a dentist. And so I did. That’s what I decided to set my focus on. Maybe it was fate because I absolutely love what I do.

Carrie:

Love that. We’ve known you for a while. You work with our dear teammate, Drew Halverson, and have worked with her over the years. But I know that you started as an associate, and then you started into building your own practice. So tell me a little bit about that. Think back to that time. When did that vision for your own practice start to take root? How did that transpire for you?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

So right out of school, I went into a clinic practice. I saw lots of patients every day, all age groups, all kinds of dental issues, and became very good at working on teeth through that experience. I wanted something a little more slower paced where I could connect with my patients a little bit better, so I sought out a private practice that I could work at. I started a couple days a week. Then I felt like I really liked that atmosphere better and then found a more permanent position in a private practice. 

I think I was with two different private practices and then kind of the same thing–maybe it found me, maybe it was fate–but I decided I need to do this. I need to do this my way. I mean, not that anybody else’s way was bad, but as a practice owner and building something for yourself, you get to practice how you want to do things, and you develop your own relationship with the patients. And I wanted to open up something close to my home, close to my community, and really have my patients as my family. So that’s what we did.

Carrie:

Yes. When we work with doctors in strategic planning and creating vision, and if they’re going into a next chapter in their career or whatever the case may be, a big message that we try to press and have them start to evaluate is, what’s right look like for you? If we’re continuously trying to create a practice based upon what other people do or other people want, your joy and fulfillment in that work is going to be significantly limited because it’s not your vision. So it’s important to get really clear on what your vision is, so that you can start to pursue, and make the decisions, and implement the things, and do the training to do the work and take care of the patients in the way that you want to. And it sounds like that’s the path that you’ve taken. 

Dr. Kassi Klein:

Exactly.

How a Family Health Crisis Launched Dr. Klein’s Interest in Airway Treatment

Carrie:

How long have you owned your practice at this point?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

We just had our sixth birthday.

Carrie:

Happy anniversary. So my understanding is that you have really taken a step in your practice into airway treatment. Tell me what led you to discover this and become so passionate about this particular treatment for your practice and your patients.

Dr. Kassi Klein:

Like you said, when you start out your vision focuses slowly on what’s important to you and what you like. Right out of school, you like everything; everything’s fun as long as you’re doing dentistry. Well, I decided I wanted to do implants. So I signed up for this course, and through that I ended up getting a CBCT machine, a 3D x-ray machine. I started looking at those a little differently. And then, there’s always talk with colleagues about new and upcoming things in dentistry. I had heard several people mention airway and I thought, that’s kind of intriguing. I always have an open mind and love to learn new things. 

And right around the time I started hearing the buzz about airway, my mom suffered a heart attack. She’s okay, she’s doing great, but there were so many things that seemed to parallel what I was learning about airway with what I saw happen to my mom. She didn’t have any kind of blockages. She didn’t have to have stents or any kind of surgery. They said that it was broken heart syndrome, which I didn’t buy because there was really nothing for her to be brokenhearted about. 

So I started reading and doing more research and I said, “Hey mom, have you ever had a sleep study?” And she’s like, “No.” And I said, “Maybe that’s something you should bring up to your cardiologist.” So she did and he’s like, “Yeah, great idea. Let’s do that.” So it turns out she was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea. And looking back over my childhood and knowing what we know now about the signs, the signs were there. If somebody had looked at her the way I look at my patients now, maybe somebody could have saved her from having a heart attack. 

And so that’s on my heart every day as I’m working with my patients. Maybe I can save them from having a health crisis later in life.

Carrie:

Wow! That gives me chills. Wow. What a purpose-rooted service to study. I can’t imagine. 

Early Training in Airway Treatment

So, where did you start? How did you start that? Did you connect to some particular types of training that were the most beneficial for you? How did you start to integrate that?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

My gateway into it was a book by Dr. Felix Liao called Six-Foot Tiger, Three-Foot Cage. Four years ago, I read that book, and I promise you when I was reading through that book, I would turn the page and my jaw was on the floor. I thought, “Oh my gosh. That’s my mom, that’s my sister, that’s my dad.” I kept seeing the parallels to my family, and then I’d go to the clinic and see my patients and I had a reason and I could tell them why. So I read, and took his courses, and just kept growing from there. 

Carrie:

This “aha” discovery that we’ve had seems like such a key piece of the whole–the oral systemic link, and airway, and the connections from the mouth to the body. With the proper training and awareness, we in dentistry are really on the front lines in more ways than we even realize.

What does this look like now? How long have you been providing this treatment in your practice at this point?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

So once I started learning about it, I hit the ground running. I started talking to all of my patients about it. So I’ve probably been doing it for about three and a half years.

What Patients are Candidates for Airway Treatment

Carrie:

And who are the patients that are benefiting from this? What is that looking like for you?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

It’s really everybody, from people that have been diagnosed with sleep apnea and know that there’s a dental connection and get referred to me, all the way to kids that are just mouth breathing. They maybe don’t have any outward signs, but there’s something going on in their mouth, and now that I know what to look for, we’re able to screen for this, and educate parents, and get these kids help. My team laughs at me, but I always say kids are where the magic happens. We can prevent so many things down the road if we can get a kid’s oral health, mouth, and development on track.

Carrie:

So when you start to integrate a very specific type of evaluation and treatment, what role does your team play in supporting you and supporting this for the patients?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

So it turns out that my team is just as passionate about it as I am. Each team member that comes on board goes through the same evolution that I experienced. They start to see that their husband or their kid has those signs, and maybe they need to get their family members in here. So they learn about it, and they become passionate about it, and so they start educating the patients as well. They share their experiences. I’ve had team members have their kids or family members go through treatment with me. And so they get to share their experiences as well.

Carrie:

Has all of your clinical team gone through airway treatment training with you? Have they gone through some of the course work with you at this point?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

Yes, they have. We have gone to several courses together. We’ve brought some people in, and we’re doing lunch and learns and things like that and learning more.

Introducing Airway Treatment to Patients in Your Practice

Carrie:

Well, I’m curious. You started out for three years not doing it, and you’ve been doing it now for three years. Was there a process that you followed to start to introduce this? Is it a “we now know” kind of conversation you were having with patients? How did you start to engage in that conversation with established patients or start even promoting it to patients outside of your practice?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

One of the key questions I always ask is, how is your sleep? How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? Do you feel rested? And sometimes I get that look like, why does my dentist care about my sleep? 

Carrie:

Do you do this in the new patient conversation?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

New patients or existing patients that maybe have not been screened or haven’t been to us in a while or something like that. Or if we notice that they’re grinding their teeth, we ask them about it and let them know that it can be linked to an impaired airway or something along those lines. So we start the conversation that way, and I think that just in general in our society, we’re seeing more people being interested in systemic health and root cause and things like that. So I have a lot of really educated patients that are coming to me with great questions.

The Power of Referrals From Other Healthcare Providers

Carrie:

Are you promoting this externally to your community as something that you provide? Are they coming to you now specifically for this?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

They are. I have a really close working relationship with a chiropractor in town, and she really understands what I do. And what I do is so closely related with what chiropractors do. I also have some myofunctional therapists that I work with, as well. And so they’re looking at speech and tongue ties, which is definitely related to airway, and they refer to me as well. So it’s really nice having a network. I have an ENT that we work with, because we talk about tonsils, and adenoids, and septums and all kinds of things. And so we have a really great network of people that we refer to each other and work on getting the patient feeling better.

Carrie:

That’s an interesting outcome because, if you’re a specialty practice, we always talk about the power of referrals from general practices and other practices, but what you are experiencing is outside of dentistry. So the power of collaboration and referrals from other healthcare providers in other areas of focus is really interesting. Did you seek those out? Did that start to just naturally happen? How did you start to create those collaborative relationships?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

It started to naturally happen. A lot of my patient base is a holistic community. People that would be labeled with the term  “crunchy”. They are looking for more natural alternatives, instead of medicine, so they seek chiropractic care a lot of times. And my chiropractor reached out to me and she said, “Hey, I’ve heard your name several times from several patients. What do you have going on over there? What’s the deal?” And that’s how that started.

Carrie:

Do you bring them in to see or to experience it themselves? 

Dr. Kassi Klein:

Absolutely. My chiropractor and her whole family are patients of mine and they’ve undergone airway treatment with me.

Carrie:

When you start to have those curious conversations come your way, invite them to come and have an evaluation to help educate them on what that experience would be like, because it’s valuable to have those kinds of voices in your corner and for you all to be looking at and looking for the same symptoms. Dr. Klein, you’ve obviously been driven by the experience you had with someone you love and are wanting a preventive approach so that others don’t have to experience that, so what a great way to start to create advocates in your community outside of dentistry by showing them and letting them experience the evaluations themselves. It would be just a tremendous relationship builder, I am sure.

Dr. Kassi Klein:

Yeah. It’s been really nice.

Obstacles to Integrating Airway Treatment in Your Practice

Carrie:

So let’s talk about obstacles. It seems to me that things are really starting to take off here for you at this point, but when you were getting started, what were some of the obstacles that you ran into and lessons learned in terms of integrating this type of treatment into the practice?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

So I think the biggest thing for me was that I was telling patients things that nobody else has ever told them before. And so there were the patients that were like, “I don’t know. Nobody’s ever said that. That sounds weird. I don’t think this is for me.” And then you had, of course, the patients that were like, “This makes so much sense. I have to know more.” So, you just keep going through those patients and pretty soon you have enough raving fans that the word spreads.

Carrie:

Persistence was just carrying on even in those moments where you got hit with questions or resistance. It didn’t change the trajectory of your path.

Dr. Kassi Klein:

Correct. 

Carrie:

Did you work on specific verbal skills as a team or for yourself? Were there some key verbal skills that you started to introduce into the conversation to help you engage in those conversations with the patients?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

Yeah, so it became more of asking questions from the patient and getting their backstory, and not opening a fire hydrant and pouring all this information down their throat. I think when we learn new things, and we get really excited about it, we have a tendency to do that, and the patient is thinking that they just came in for a cleaning. 

Carrie:

Yeah. “I didn’t come here for that. Thanks so much. I didn’t come here for that.”  I thought one of the great ones that you just said was just asking the question, how’s your sleep? How are you sleeping? I think doctors that are focused on some more of those holistic approaches, ask those kinds of questions that patients are never asked before.

Dr. Kassi Klein:

I was at a CE course recently  for the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine and the keynote speaker said something along the lines of, where do most of our sleep patients come from in a sleep clinic? And it’s from the emergency room–people that have had a heart attack, people that have had a health crisis. Nobody’s looking at their sleep or screening them prior to them having some kind of health crisis.

Carrie:

Yes. That kind of opens up another can of worms, because it’s always a continuous constant pursuit to educate patients, to build value for dental care in general, to help them see the value and the need for that. Because for some reason or another, dentistry is always behind the eight ball a little bit, in terms of value in the patient’s mindset. So now you’re talking about a whole other thing that they’re not even looking for. How do you overcome that? How do you help them see? Is it really just getting the message out and the interested will come?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

I don’t know. The patients that we talk to just seem so very grateful. An overwhelming majority of patients are thankful for the information. They see that it makes a lot of sense. Even if they don’t do anything or act on it now, at least they have the education and we get patients that are very appreciative that we’re looking for things that other people may not have mentioned before or screened them for before.

Airway Treatment Becoming Standard of Care in Dental Practices

Carrie:

Do you see this type of treatment and care being the way of the future of the role dental practices play in our patients lives?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

A thousand percent. I really truly do. I’ve even said that recently. I truly believe this is going to be the standard of care. The pediatric portion of the American Dental Association recommends that we screen for sleep apnea, so it’s already coming. These seeds have already been planted. 

Carrie:

So just like oral cancer screenings are part of standard of care, the next phase of those patient appointments is that we screen for airway issues…

Dr. Kassi Klein:

…for airway issues, for sleep apnea, for sleep disordered breathing. I think tongue ties and lip ties are going to be more of a forefront and more of a focus. We just need to get the education out there to different modalities.

Steps to Getting Started in Airway Treatment in Your Dental Practice

Carrie:

Yes. So for those that are listening or watching who are seeking this out or are interested, what advice would you give those doctors on where to start or what those next steps would be?

Dr. Kassi Klein:

Take a course. There’s so many. There’s the Breathe Institute with Dr. Zaghi. There’s the Vivos Institute, which offers a whole slew of courses of all kinds. There’s Ben Miraglia’s Airway Health Solutions. There’s so many now. It’s very easy to get more information and start learning to do this.

Carrie:

I love that. Dr. Klein, thank you so much for joining us. It’s such a pleasure to work with you and to see you thriving and embracing these newfound ways that we now know can help our patients become healthy, stay healthy, and have healthy, happy lives. We appreciate you and appreciate this time.

Dr. Kassi Klein:

Thank you.

Carrie:

So for all of you that are listening, listen to what Dr. Klein says. If this is something that is of interest to you, do you see that there’s an already established need in your community or in your practice to explore AOA treatment for your patients? Find that course. Seek out the people that share philosophy that feels like it resonates with you, and seek out that course. Get training for yourself, get training for your team, work on those verbal skills, and start to implement these life changing services in your practice. 

I agree with you, Dr. Klein. I think this could be the wave of the future of standard of care for how we take care of our patients now and into the future. 

Dr. Kassi Klein:

I sure hope so. 

I do too. So thank you and thanks to all of you in the Jameson podcast community. Be well and we’ll see you next time. 

Carrie Webber:

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Jameson Files. Visit us online. You can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify. See you next time.