Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Dr. Dar Radfar: Clinical Mistake
34 Plays1 month ago
In the next episode of Dental Fuel, Dr. Dar Radfar shares his powerful story of how a life-changing car accident led him to discover his own sleep apnea and completely transform his career.
Tune in as we explore his journey from that pivotal moment to over 22 years of helping patients improve their health through dentistry. You won’t want to miss this!
Key Takeaways:
- Integrating Sleep Apnea Treatment: Dr. Radfar emphasizes the transformative effects of incorporating sleep apnea solutions into dental practices, both for patient health and practice growth.
- Personal Experience: A life-threatening car accident revealed Dr. Radfar's own sleep apnea, igniting his passion for developing effective dental treatments for the condition.
- Continuous Learning: The importance of ongoing education and specialization, especially regarding new and complex procedures in dentistry.
- Professional Reflection: Insights into how Dr. Radfar overcame early career challenges by focusing on his strengths and seeking additional training.
- Mental Health Connections: The critical link between quality sleep, mental health, and overall well-being as observed through a dental lens.
About the Guest:
Dr. Dar Radfar is a seasoned dentist with over 22 years of experience in the field. He is a key advocate for integrating sleep apnea and snoring treatment within dental practices. Dr. Radfar began focusing on sleep apnea in 2009 after experiencing a life-changing car accident caused by his own undiagnosed condition. He has since become a pioneer in developing dental solutions for sleep apnea, creating over 1600 mouthpieces, and sharing his knowledge through RadSeminar.com where he educates other dentists.
Connect with Dr. Rad: @dr.radhealth
Connect with Ignitedds and Dr. David Rice: @ignitedds Free Intro Call
Connect with Tanya Sue Maestas: @tsmaestas.dds
Learn more about 90 Day JumpStart : https://ignitedds.com
Recommended
Transcript
Welcome & Podcast's Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
Dental Fuel, the podcast that focuses on what no one else is talking about. Mistakes. The dental world is full of before and afters and no one is talking about the middle. Dental Fuel brings you the unspoken in-between. Welcome back to another episode of Dental Fuel.
Sponsor Introduction: 90 Day Jumpstart
00:00:17
Speaker
Dental Fuel is brought to you by 90 Day Jumpstart, a program to help you increase production and break free from financial stress.
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome back to Dental Fuel.
Meet Dr. Dhar Radfar
00:00:27
Speaker
We are back with another guest, Dr. Dhar Radfar. Dr. Radfar is a seasoned dentist with over 22 years of experience in the field. He is an advocate for integrating sleep apnea and snoring treatment within dental practices.
00:00:41
Speaker
In our first episode, Dr. Redfar dives into his personal journey of discovering his sleep apnea condition after a severe car accident.
Dr. Radfar's Sleep Apnea Journey
00:00:49
Speaker
He shows his experience and insights gained over 22 years in practice and he shares some clinical mistakes that he's made along the way. Let's listen in. Dr. Dar Redfar, Dr. Red, welcome to Dental Fuel. How are you doing today? Good. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited.
00:01:06
Speaker
I'm so excited to have you here with us and to learn about you here at Dental Fuel. I would love if you tell me and our listeners a little bit about yourself. So I'm a dentist that's been practicing for about 22 years now. I do about 25% of my practice is sleep apnea and snoring treatment. And the other 75% is like most of us here that do kind a bunch of winter crowns a month to some Invisalign traditional braces. I place implants.
00:01:34
Speaker
you I tried to do it all, but a lot of my practice is now doing a lot of sleep. I got into sleep in 2009. I fell asleep at the wheel myself. I crashed my car into a tree going about 40 miles an hour, having no idea that I had sleep apnea at the tender age of 32. We're not about the typical poster child if there is one. I'm not overweight or anything like that, but the I've learned a lot about sleep since I became patient zero at my office.
Impact of Sleep Apnea Discovery
00:02:05
Speaker
They gave me a CPAP machine, a good old oxygen mask. and
00:02:09
Speaker
Told them, no, thank you. And in 2010, I made myself a mouthpiece. And since then I've made over 1600 mouthpieces in my office. Patients come from all over the country. And I also teach this stuff through my radseminar dot.com to other dentists so I can pay it forward. The more we teach each other how to do things, the more we can help our patients and hopefully save lives and prevent people from getting into car accidents like I did.
00:02:37
Speaker
Wow, what a huge wake up call. Could you tell me a little bit about what happened the days after that accident? yeah you know it's Great question. It was most of an embarrassing moment because it's like, wow, how did I fall asleep a block away from my home? Was i was that really the problem? like What was going on in my life? you know You start guessing yourself on how hard you're working. Are you are you putting enough time for yourself, giving enough yourself enough sleep time in general, let alone quality sleep?
00:03:10
Speaker
And so um at the time, I was told I was snoring a little bit, especially if I had a couple drinks. And the snoring was kind of a red flag for me, but also just feeling a little bit more tired throughout the
Integrating Sleep Apnea Treatment in Dentistry
00:03:22
Speaker
day. And I was noticing that now. Obviously, I was more aware of it just because I got into that accident. I walked away, by the way, without a scratch.
00:03:29
Speaker
which is which was very surprising. And so I ended up looking up how to get a home sleep test. I asked one of my medical doctor friends, and I was able to get a home sleep test because she wants to go to a lab. And so a home sleep test was given, and i was discovered we discovered a few weeks later that I have mild sleep apnea. Wow. um how So I'm sure that that that was so life-changing for you. How did you start to implement some of that sleep workflow into your practice? Well, you know, when when they gave me the CPAP and I said, I can't tolerate it, I realized that the studies out there showed that the toleration of CPAP is around 30 to 35% for most studies, meaning out of 100 people, 30 to 35 people keep it and use it, toleration by the way,
00:04:22
Speaker
ah five nights a week for about five hours at night. It's not even a full seven nights a week, six to seven hours of sleep. So I couldn't tolerate it. And when I found out that there's a mouthpiece and it changed my life, I wasn't as let's call it grumpy or or kind of in the mood when I go to the dental office in a bad mood in the mornings, I was definitely not snoring anymore. That just propelled me to like, wow, like who else could make this? No one but us as dentists, you have to be a dental licensed professional in this country to make this a medical doctor can't make it. Of course, we can't diagnose sleep apnea, we have to refer them for diagnosis by referring the patient for home sleep study.
00:05:02
Speaker
which we can do in most states, and in almost 48 states in this country, a dentist can refer a patient to a sleep state. So I started talking to my patients about it, where they asked me, so how are you doing doc? I'm like, well, I got into a car accident, fell asleep with the wheel. Now I wear this mouthpiece and I had my mouthpiece in the office, made two of them.
00:05:22
Speaker
as ah kind of like a sample. And like oh yeah my you know my wife tells me or my husband tells me, I snore, you know can you help me with that? And all of a sudden it just became, I was one of i i think the first ones in my community and in California to be able to really talk about this and do it. And then I learned a lot of that.
00:05:40
Speaker
ah things about the mouthpiece that you know can't help everyone, but majority of patients that are mild to moderate sleep apnea patients, it can help them breathe better so we can prevent a slew of medical conditions that we can get into. but The newest one is five times higher risk of cancer of any kind if you're not treated for it.
Importance of Sleep for Well-being
00:06:00
Speaker
There's a lot of medical issues. It's not just an embarrassing thing or or a dangerous thing about falling asleep with the wheel or a mood thing.
00:06:08
Speaker
you know what the One of the biggest topics right now is mental health, your emotional ah maturity or emotional replenishment of your serotonin and whatnot. You have to get good quality sleep to feel happy.
00:06:23
Speaker
I mean, how how many times do we get poor sleep? Because we have kids that we're waking up in the ummaah night for, or we hold all-nighters to be able to study for a final back in the day, or just in general, something keeps us up. And the next day, you're not your happy-go-lucky cheerleader-type dentist or hygienist or staff member that comes in. and doesn't allow 20 to 30 patients to get to them. You got to have good quality air breathing, ah well sleep to be able to have a good mental well being as well. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. And, you know, I love the fact that, you know, sleep is being incorporated more in the dental world and that we can play such a huge part in really helping our patients transform their lives starting with, you know, something
00:07:11
Speaker
something so big and yet so, you know, looked at it so small as, you know, starting with our sleep.
Learning from Mistakes in Dentistry
00:07:18
Speaker
But Dr. Red, I'd like to get into the nitty gritty here and and here at Dental Fuel. We are dedicated at sharing each other's mistakes and learning from those mistakes. and And I'm excited to hear what mistakes that you have made in your career. And I would love if you would tell me and and our listeners ah what clinical mistake you have made and or one that you think about maybe early on in your dental career that you maybe still remember and how you handled it? You know, I look at dentistry sometimes, the services that we provide as kind of like a menu of lists of things that we can do. I call it a sushi menu in my courses of now you can add sleep apnea and snoring treatment to your menu.
00:08:00
Speaker
as people go down the list of of things that they have problems with and whatnot. And unfortunately, we think let's take a course like placing implants and then we can go in and right away feel somewhat relatively bold and comfortable in doing it.
00:08:17
Speaker
And earlier in my career, when I learned how to do implant placement, I was a little too gung-ho about doing most cases. So a couple of times I had temporary parasthesia, you know, get close to the nerve. And one time I placed the implant that was into the sinus and we got a lot of bleeding. so these kinds of mistakes, I feel like I should have done the easier ones for a while and taken more educational courses and more advanced courses before wanting to keep things in house. After 22 years, now I know I'm comfortable with what I'm comfortable with. I don't try to push the envelope just to
00:08:54
Speaker
You know not have to refer the patient because most patients do want to stay in your office for the treatment that you're doing But some of these cases we have to be aware that we may not be fully well versed in treating some of the complicated cases and That was one of my clinical mistakes was pushing myself too hard to do all the
Handling Professional Setbacks
00:09:13
Speaker
cases. I thought I could do Instead of referring them out when I felt like a little bit more uncomfortable and And if in retrospect, I would have referred more of the tougher cases and gotten more training and spent more time on the education to be able to handle these tougher cases. I resonate with that. I think that for many of us, you know, we go to a CE course and we're ready. You know, we we want to get in there ready to
00:09:38
Speaker
I get thrown in there ah and, um, you know, oftentimes it's through those challenging cases that that we learn as you have. And sometimes it's learning that you got to punt sometimes and you can't do it all. And so, um, yeah, we, uh, it's the practice of dentistry as they say. And so we learn ah a little at a time for you though. How, how did you overcome, um, that challenge of, Hey, you know what, I can't take on these challenging cases, but I still want to do it.
00:10:04
Speaker
I'm going to backtrack a little bit and start focusing more on maybe some simpler cases that I can manage. You know, it's a lot of times we beat ourselves up for some of the failed cases that we have, right? It's an emotional beat down of ourselves, guilty feeling. um You know, there's there's a little bit of, let's call it confidence that gets deterred and and you become a little bit more nervous, a little more angry, a little bit more sad and depressed about your profession when things don't go well.
00:10:36
Speaker
and and And no one's perfect. you know I realize that in everything that we do in life, confidence is really important. And the way you speak to your patients resonates. If you're not confident about a procedure that you're doing, they're not going to be kind it's going to show through the way you communicate with the patient. And so I actually started you know taking more courses and understanding what I need to improve on.
00:11:00
Speaker
More specifically, I even took sleep apnea courses from other people back in the early 2012, 2013 era time to be able to do and feel really comfortable about certain procedures that I know I actually relatively enjoyed doing. so I looked at some of the things that I don't enjoy doing like root canals and I said, okay, no matter what, I'm going to stop that. I'm not going to try to push myself. So you got to see what you're comfortable with. And that's what my vision was, is I'm comfortable in doing a certain procedure. Let me get better at it by taking some more courses and then just keep practicing and doing more and more. And ultimately it was confidence building in yourself, understanding your self worth,
00:11:43
Speaker
and and And not beating yourself down was really the pivotal part for me because even that one crown that cracks or the you know, the one patient that comes in after a routine silver filling removal and they're like, oh my God, it wasn't bothering me before. Now it's killing me. We get that all the time, right? I just don't beat myself up for it anymore. If it's not me, it's that other dentist that would have done the same, and probably in the same demeanor that I hear it all the time from some patients about another dental experience dentist experience. We can't be perfect, you know, a hundred out of a hundred patients walk in and walk out happy and never, you know, complain.
Conclusion & Next Episode Preview
00:12:18
Speaker
And so taking the burden off yourself of that perfectionist mindset really, really needs to be done. And, you know, learning how to breathe and push through, try to fix what you can. And if you can't fix it, you let them know and you refer out, you you know we refund the money as accordingly. and move forward Thanks for tuning into this first episode with Dr. Radfar. We hope that you will join us next week for another conversation where we talk about financial mistakes. If you're looking to grow your practice and need some help along the way, be sure to check out 90 Day Jumpstart. You can start for free by contacting Dr. David Rice. Check out the link to his calendar in the show notes.