Thomas E. Meade died after a short illness on July 16, 2016, leaving bereft his family and the many friends in his community and his profession. His passing marks the loss of a pioneer and an energetic advocate for the role of dentistry in sleep medicine. Many of us met Tom at national meetings where he would demonstrate his most recent inventions for treating sleep-disturbed breathing with oral appliances with his customary enthusiasm and congeniality. Many more knew Tom from his activity in dental meetings including the founding days of the now American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine. Others knew him as a compassionate clinician who was always ready to help his patients and his physician colleagues. He was loved in his community and appreciated for the generous support of its institutions.
A native of New Mexico, Tom attended New Mexico Military Institute, Tulane University, and the dental program at Marquette University. After a decorated tour of duty with the Air Force, Tom returned to New Mexico to establish a dental practice in Albuquerque where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. With the help of his wife Caroline Oxnard Meade, Tom presided over a family of five children and 8 grandchildren. Apart from work Tom poured his enthusiasm into family outings, often skiing, and work on old cars, including a gorgeous V12 Packard convertible, as well as other classic cars and motorcycles.
Tom had an inventive mind and a capacity for original thought. Sleep became a fertile field for his energy after he developed an oral appliance to control a personal snoring problem. The year was 1984 when he introduced himself to this University professor with an idea: that an ‘activator’ appliance might be helpful for obstructive sleep apnea. There had been some whispers in the literature about this approach including a letter to the NEJM and an abstract from Germany. The first patient was an Albuquerque physician who hated the rudimentary CPAP that I had fashioned, and he worked with Tom on an appliance that became the Snore Guard, a boil and bite mandible advancing appliance with subsequent wide use. The report of our initial experience in 1988 attracted considerable attention, including an interview by Self magazine. It was upward and onward from there. Tom continued to improve his appliance design resulting in an adjustable boil and bite appliance and a total of 3 separate appliance patents. In recent years he retired from practice but he could not resist continued contact with his colleagues and the occasional patient. He will be missed by all.
Thomas E. Meade, DDS