It is a general question asked by many person with the diagnosis: Does sleep apnea can be cured? To start, let’s consider what obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) actually is. By meaning, the pauses in breathing throughtout your sleep that characterize this condition are triggered by a physical blockage in the airway, an enlarged tongue, large tonsils or adenoids, a limp soft palette, or sometimes a deviated nasal septum.
These blockages lead to a cessation in breathing, which lead your body to go into panic mode and partially wake up to restore normal respiration. In the most severe cases, these apneic episodes can happen up to 100 times per hour!
For the most part, sleep apnea is a chronic situation that does not disappear. Anatomy tends to remain fixed, spesifically after adolescence has ended. So, kid with sleep apnea may retain hope for the condition being successfully and definitively treated. The removal of tonsils and adenoids with tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy may be very beneficial for kid with sleep apnea. The treatment of allergies and expansion of the hard palate with an orthodontic therapy known as rapid maxillary expansion may prove useful.
After growth has ended, there remain additional treatment choices. Young male or female who have finished puberty and other adults have surgical options available to them that may prove helpful. The most successful is jaw advancement surgery. This procedure, also known as maxillo-mandibular advancement, can be highly effective, resolving sleep apnea in upwards of 80% of people. It consist of major surgery in which the jawbones are surgically broken, moved forward, and then repaired in place, particularly with titanium screws and plates. This changes the facial profile. Recovery particularly takes couples months.
Other surgeries can also be applied to change the anatomy, but, in common, these procedures are less effective. These choices include surgery on the soft palate such as the uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP) as well as septoplasty to fix a deviated septum. In addition, radiofrequency ablation of the nasal turbinates may offer some relief to nasal congestion and obstruction. Debulking of the base of the tongue and movement of the tongues anchors (hyoid advancement) are also sometimes done. In addition, there are some risk factors that are modifiable with other changes that do not need surgery.
