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Events You Should Attend And Why

Attending in person orthodontic events, dental conferences, and airway seminars should be a priority for anyone wanting to learn about or increase their knowledge in the airway arena.   Some of the top dental events and orthodontic workshops featuring lectures on airway orthodontics are the best places to learn from a variety of speakers with knowledge and experience in treating patients with airway disorders.  The dental industry has no shortage of meetings to attend, but some of the most important CE events dentistry has to offer are on the subject of airway.

Hearing speakers with knowledge and first hand experience treating patients of all ages is a huge benefit of attending meetings. Perhaps an even more important benefit comes from meeting other doctors who are on a similar learning path with their own stories of success and failure to tell. Establishing connections with like minded professionals helps comfort the new student in their own, sometimes challenging, CE journey.

FAQs About Events You Should Attend And Why

What are the top orthodontic events for 2024-2025?

I am looking forward to speaking at the IAOMT meeting in Salt Lake City this spring on how sleep and breathing affects our overall health. The AAGO meeting will be a joint meeting with my E.R.R.S.™ Mentorship in Savannah in late September where we will learn about reading cone beam x-rays and how that may affect treatment plans. There is also a joint meeting of the AAO and the AAPD on early ortho treatment in Marco Island in January. The AAPMD is not meeting again until 2026, but that is always a “don’t miss” event. These will be good events and learning opportunities.

Yes, fortunately there are more groups getting interested in this important topic. It is important to be sure to evaluate the material being presented as some speakers are simply parroting what they have heard others say with little experience.
CE events provide a forum for the many orthodontists who are unfamiliar with airway treatment to get up to speed and provide services for the hundreds of thousands of kids and adults who are in desperate need of help. The future of orthodontics will be rosy for those who are trained in airway. It will not be so great for those who have not learned how airway impacts overall health and how orthodontics can help. Traditional orthodontic treatment of aligning teeth and making them fit like gears has become a commodity and not worth spending time in C.E. courses focused on just straightening teeth. Are there still courses in how to make buggy whips?
I’m a big believer in seminars being honest about what is being presented. The presenter should have extensive experience in treatment long before they attempt to teach others what they are doing. It isn’t acceptable for a lecturer to be in the mode of “see one, do one, teach one”. If the presenter doesn’t show you problem cases or case failures you probably won’t gain much worthwhile. Long term followup is critical for credibility of treatment approaches. I had been treating very early in the primary dentition for more than 10 years before I started even mentioning it. I wanted long term followup before I taught others.
Unless airway is mentioned in the title of the workshop or conference don’t expect it to be covered. As noted earlier, much CE in ortho is still focused on how to align teeth and make them fit like gears. I invite skepticism about everything.
I’ve benefited from taking advice from people I trust to endorse a meeting or course to take. I look critically at the program for any event to see who the speakers are, their background, and a description of what they will be discussing. I don’t attend meetings just to travel. I want every meeting to be worth my time and present me with something I’ve not heard before.

The AAGO has some very good courses to take beginners by the hand and introduce them to orthodontics. It doesn’t take a 2-3 year orthodontic residency to learn the basics. Once the basics have been learned I strongly recommend getting involved in airway treatment. That is what we focus on in our Early Childhood Health-centered Orthodontics™ (E.C.H.O.) and Extraction Retraction Regret Syndrome™ (E.R.R.S.™) Mentorships.

Most of the current emphasis I see at traditional orthodontic conferences is on aligners and surgically assisted expansion. There is a place for both. However, both are being over-used IMO.