Systems and methods for positioning a patient's mandible in response to sleep apnea status

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10537463-B2
Application number	US-201614992175-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 11, 2016
Priority date	Jan 13, 2015
Publication date	Jan 21, 2020
Grant date	Jan 21, 2020

Abstract

Systems, methods, devices, and apparatus for positioning a patient's mandible in response to sleep apnea status are provided herein. In one aspect, a system for monitoring and treating sleep apnea in a patient comprises one or more sensors configured to monitor the patient for symptoms associated with sleep apnea; an intraoral appliance worn by the patient, one or more processors, and memory comprising instructions executable by the one or more processors to cause the one or more processors to: receive a set of sensor data from the one or more sensors, detect, using a machine learning algorithm, onset of a sleep apnea event based on the set of sensor data, and transmit a control signal to the intraoral appliance to cause the intraoral appliance to displace a lower jaw of the patient from a first position to a second position in order to treat the sleep apnea event.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for monitoring and treating a sleep apnea condition in a patient, the method comprising:
receiving first sensor data from one or more sensors configured to monitor the patient for symptoms associated with a first state of the sleep apnea condition;
detecting, using a first comparison of historical data or predicted data with the first state of the sleep apnea condition executed by one or more processors, a first sleep apnea event corresponding to the sleep apnea condition; and
transmitting a first control signal to a wearable intraoral appliance worn by the patient to instruct an actuator on the wearable intraoral appliance to provide a first displacement force to displace a lower jaw of the patient from a first position to a second position in order to treat the sleep apnea condition; wherein the first position is a habitual jaw position and the second position is an advanced jaw position, and displacing the lower jaw comprises advancing the lower jaw from the habitual jaw position to the advanced jaw position.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first sensor data comprises a measurement of one or more of: breathing sounds, snoring sounds, breathing rate, respiratory air flow, chest expansion, oxygen level, cardiac data, or sleeping position, or combinations thereof.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the historical data comprises data of previous sleep patterns of the patient.

4. The method of claim 3 , further comprising:
identifying a discrepancy between a current sleeping pattern of the patient and the previous sleep patterns of the patient; and
generating an alert indicative of the discrepancy.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving second sensor data from the one or more sensors, the second sensor data associated with a second state of the sleep apnea condition;
detecting, using a second comparison of the historical data or predicted data with the second state of the sleep apnea condition, termination of the first sleep apnea event; and
transmitting a second control signal to the wearable intraoral appliance to instruct the actuator to provide a second displacement force to displace the lower jaw of the patient from the second position to the first position in order to further treat the sleep apnea condition.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising determining the second position for the lower jaw using the first comparison.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising:
receiving third sensor data from the one or more sensors while the lower jaw is in the second position; and
determining effectiveness of the second position of the lower jaw in treating the sleep apnea condition based on the third sensor data.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising updating the historical data or predicted data based on the determined effectiveness.

9. The method of claim 7 , further comprising:
determining, using a third comparison of the historical data or predicted data with the first state, a modified position of the lower jaw to improve the effectiveness of treating the sleep apnea condition; and
transmitting a third control signal to the wearable intraoral appliance to instruct the actuator to provide a third displacement force to displace the lower jaw to the modified position.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the historical data or predicted data is formed by a neural network trained using data including previous sleep apnea events.

Assignees

• Align Technology Inc

Inventors

• Kopelman Avi

Classifications

• A61F5/566 Primary

  Intra-oral devices · CPC title