His first papers described clinical observations in young adults who had small jaws, and who also had upper airway obstruction during sleep.
Robin proposed a novel idea of holding the lower jaw forward and mouth open, through the use of special dental splints; and specifically with an invented and novel device he later called the "Monobloc".
Later in the 1960s, authors writing in British Oral Surgery journals, and in particular David Poswillo, a New Zealand Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeon and UK based teratologist, postulated that the combination of am extremely small mandible, and oligohydramnios during late pregnancy, combined to produce a particularly unique form of non-formation of the palatal shelf - a condition distinct from other more usual forms of cleft palate.
[3][4][5] This rare cleft condition is separated from the eponymous term Pierre Robin Syndrome, which Robin had at first termed “Le Grand Syndromie du Glossoptosis”, and that was originally meant to describe the simple combined local and systemic effects of mandibular hypoplasia innately associated with glossoptosis.
Distinct to “Pierre Robin Sequence”, which now specifically references the rare palatal cleft condition, and occurs in about 1:80,000 live births, Robin postulated that the most obvious and ubiquitously linked association of glossoptosis, being the small lower jaw, had a natural frequency of a minimum of 40% of the adult Paris population of the time.