Obstructive Sleep Apnea Surgery

Posted By EightNine On 29th April 2011

Obstructive sleep apnea is a condition that causes people to stop breathing for short periods while they are asleep. The condition can lead to more serious health problems in some people and in that case it will be necessary to find an effective treatment. There are a number of treatment options available however none of them are completely effective. One of the options is obstructive sleep apnea surgery. In general this is only used in cases when all the other options have failed.

In general it is not necessary to have surgery to treat sleep apnea; normally other treatment options are able to handle the job. However in some of the more severe cases it might be necessary to consider obstructive sleep apnea surgery. This is usually only recommended if you have tried the other available options and they have been unsuccessful. The main reason for this is that it is fairly major surgery and even then the success rate is not all that good. Therefore it tends to only be used as a last resort when everything else has failed.

The idea behind obstructive sleep apnea surgery is to remove the soft tissue at the back of the throat. This would include parts of the soft palate and the uvula. The doctor will also remove the adenoids and the tonsils if they are present. This will increase the width of the airway making it less likely that it will become obstructed. It also blocks some of the action of the muscle, this helps to keep the airway open. This should help to prevent the obstruction from occurring so that you can breathe properly while you are sleeping.

The main problem with obstructive sleep apnea surgery is that it does not have a very good success rate. In general only about sixty five percent of the people will see a reduction in their sleep apnea symptoms. Even worse as time goes by many people find that their symptoms come back so that the long term success rate is more like fifty percent. This is why other treatments are usually tried first. There is some evidence that the surgery is really only effective on people who have sleep apnea that is caused by issues with their soft palate. If there are other factors causing the apnea the surgery is not all that useful.

Like all surgeries there are some complications involved with obstructive sleep apnea surgery. The biggest of these is simply that the procedure is very painful, and it takes a long time to recover from the surgery. The other big issue is infection which is so common that forty percent of people who receive the surgery will need to have another surgery to deal with the infection. There may also be issues with the soft palate in particular you may have a hard time keeping liquids out of the airway. Difficulty swallowing and an impaired sense of smell are also fairly common.

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