Can Sleep Apnea Be Treated with Surgery

Sleep apnea is a potentially dangerous disorder in which the patient’s breathing stops for a short time during sleep and that is frequently associated with loud snoring. The principle types of sleep apnea are obstructive apnea, that occurs when the muscles of the throat become too relaxed, central apnea, when the problem is caused by the brain not sending proper signals to the muscles  and complex apnea that is a combination of the other two types.

There are many methods used for correcting apnea, one of the most common methods is a trip to the best oral surgeon Chicago offers for surgery. The surgical methods usually involve multiple interventions performed in various areas. One of the interventions performed to reduce or eliminate apnea is surgery performed on the back of the roof of the mouth to enlarge the airway by removing and repositioning tissue. The other common type of surgical intervention uses radiofrequency ablation to shrink and to tighten the throat muscles. If the problem is caused by the obstruction or the abnormal size of the nasal passage, the surgical intervention is performed to straighten the deviated nasal septum, while for apnea caused by an enlarged septum, a procedure called turbinate reduction is used to reduce the size of the septum.