Ron Hruska and I attended the 2018 International Association of Orofacial Myologists (IAOM) this weekend in Charlotte, NC. It was an informative conference attended by Speech Language Pathologists (SLP), Registered Dental Hygienists (RDH), Dentists and one other PT. The speakers included physicians (MD and DO), dentists, and SLP’s who spoke about topics including but not limited to: connecting the mouth to the rest of the body, guiding orofacial development in children, techniques for speaking and feeding in children with special needs, techniques for addressing tethered oral tissue (TOT; tongue and lip ties), wound management from TOT surgery, the tongues effect on the body, genetic disorders, and publication trends and evidence in Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy literature.
Ron spoke on Orofacial Myologic Disorders (OMD) Relationship to Postural Asymmetry. It was a well – received lecture where Ron focused on respecting the neck, asymmetry, anatomy, forward head posture and the importance of recognizing sense. He performed a test/ retest demonstration of how a PRI technique results in neutrality. They were amazed to say the least!
Following this lecture Ron and I received many questions from the course attendees about the value of physical therapy. We tried hard to explain to them that their local PT without PRI experience may not be able to address their patient’s issues as demonstrated by Ron in the lecture. It is likely these course attendees (SLP’s and RDH’s) will be contacting you from the PRI website as a clinician to help them treat their patients. Understand that they believe they are the ones who should be treating the tongue and mouth directly. It will be a nice opportunity for PRC’s to help guide these practitioner’s understanding how the position of the neck and body, and the underlying asymmetry, we all appreciate, can have a significant influence on their treatment, approach and results when addressing oral myology pathology and disorders. We both came away with a high degree of respect and appreciation for these interactive and collaborative, multi-disciplinarians.
