Help! My Patient Has a Small Mouth! Working Alongside TMJ Physiotherapists – GF020

‘Easy Dentistry on Difficult Patients is still Difficult’ - Dr Lincoln Harris



Patients with small mouth opening can be a huge pain in the back for Dentists - but did you know there are ways we can significantly improve their mouth opening through physiotherapy?




https://youtu.be/v_u9sBAGliU
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In this episode I’m joined by Dr. Tzvika Greenbaum, a specialist TMJ physiotherapist who's here to spill the beans on his journey from headaches to jawaches. We bring to light the jaw-dropping collaboration between dentists and physiotherapists, making dental treatment easier for both you and your patients.



Need to Read it? Check out the Full Episode Transcript below!



Highlights of the episode:00:00 Intro01:02 Dr. Tzvika Greenbaum03:39 Dentistry meets physiotherapy09:33 Range of movement10:23 Asymmetry11:20 Prevention12:20 Advice to dentists14:34 Stretching16:17 The dental gym16:57 Sleep bruxists vs. awake bruxists19:28 Reducing sleep bruxism20:52 Obstructive sleep apnoea22:03 Statistics and diagnostic criteria25:16 At-home exercises27:20 Pain and discomfort28:39 Rehabilitation30:14 When to involve a physiotherapist31:12 Expected results32:21 Screening34:15 Dr. Greenbaum’s event39:04 Outro



Dr. Greenbaum’s upcoming course: protrusive.co.uk/greenbaum



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Click below for full episode transcript:



Jaz's Introduction: One of my mentors, Dr. Lincoln Harris, once taught me that easy dentistry on a difficult patient is still difficult, and nothing makes our dentistry more difficult than that patient who just can't open, or the patient that keeps closing their mouth. Like, it's impossible to do high quality work in that kind of a patient.



Jaz's Introduction:Hello, Protruserati. I'm Jaz Gulati, and in this Group Function where we just focus on one theme, today's big topic is "Help! My patient Can't Open Their Mouth!" And you'll be amazed with some physio with some exercises with some training if you like your patient can actually open significantly more allowing you to do better dentistry and allowing the patient to get better outcomes. We're joined today by our first ever Israeli guest Dr. Greenbaum who is a physiotherapist who specialized in the area of TMD and he'll be coming soon to the UK.



So I thought ahead of his visit, let's talk about a really important topic that I think is going to help you guys in the real world where our patients are struggling to keep their mouth open. What causes this and how can we get involved either just by yourself or working in tandem with a physiotherapist? Let's join the main episode now and I'll catch you in the outro.



Main Episode:Dr. Greenbaum, welcome to the Protrusive Dental Podcast. How are you?



[Tzvika]Hey, hi Jaz. I'm very well. Thank you very much. And thank you for inviting me to speak about my favorite topic, which is Rehabilitation of Patients with Temporomandibular Disorders.



[Jaz]It's great to be able to help our patients in pain. And this is exactly what it's about, pain and discomfort. And I'm going to really try and extract all the knowledge and experience that you have. But just share with the Protruserati listening right now, what is your background? How did you niche into rehabilitation of temporomandibular disorders and psychogenic and in that area?



[Tzvika]Well, my bachelor's degree was back in 2004 in Haifa University in Israel. And after that, I headed up to Australia, South Australia to learn a master's degree in musculoskeletal and sports physiotherapy and a very well-known degree. But in that degree, I started to get into the topic of cervical spine.



Upper cervical spine rehabilitation of patients with headaches. It was a new thing for physiotherapists to rehabilitate patients with cervicogenic headac...