Bill HangDental Practitioner, Lecturer at OrthO2Health

The Case Against Retractive Orthodontics - William M. Hang DDS MSD

18 Mar 2013 · 2 min

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1:41

In this excerpt, Dr. William M. Hang recounts a conversation with Dr. John Remmers, who asserted that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) stems from structural narrowing of the pharynx and that a forward‑positioned jaw would largely prevent the condition. Hang shows Remmers x‑rays of patients treated with BioBlock Orthotropics, which demonstrate forward jaw positioning, and notes Remmers’ amazement. Hang then pivots to a broader critique: mainstream orthodontics in the United States is fundamentally retractive, a fact he says is evident across journal articles and confirmed by fellow orthodontists Barry and Stavanka. He warns that routine retraction can adversely affect facial growth, setting up a collision between conventional practice and the physiological needs highlighted by OSA research.

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This one statement was from John Remmers speaking in Phoenix several years ago. OSA is due to structural narrowing of the pharynx in most, if not all, cases of sleep apnea. And so I went right up to him afterwards and I said, so, Dr. Remmers, let me get this really Clear. You're saying to me that if the jaws were properly positioned forward in the face, sleep apnea would not exist? Is that what I'm hearing you say? Yeah, that's pretty much it. I said, great, that's what I do for a living. And I showed him x-rays of patients that I treat with BioBlock Orthotropics, and he was blown away. So I think about these kind of things and realize that orthodontics is basically retractive in nature. Does anyone but me see a problem here? Now we have 2 orthodontists here, Barry and Stavanka. Would you agree that orthodontics is basically retractive in nature? Yes. You look at any American Journal of Orthodontics and you see retraction being done routinely in every journal. That's the order of the day. And yet if we're to believe— and you're gonna see later on what the effect of retraction has on the growth of the face subsequent to the time that the retraction is done. Ahem. So to me, it makes pretty obvious sense that we got a problem here. Basically, you have 2 things on a collision course.