Surgery is not generally recognized as a frontline treatment for
sleep apnea, because the risks are high, the success rate is low, and even when it succeeds, regression is common. But in many situations, surgery is a good treatment option for sleep apnea. For example, in people who cannot adapt to sleep apnea but would not otherwise get enough benefit from
oral appliances. Many people experience adequate relief from sleep apnea surgery that they don’t need supplemental treatments.
To learn whether sleep apnea surgery will help you, please call
(248) 480-0085
or
email
the Michigan Center for TMJ & Sleep Wellness today for an appointment with Detroit sleep dentist Dr. Jeffrey Haddad.
This is the most commonly performed sleep apnea surgery, though it’s also one of the least successful. The success rate for this procedure is 50% or less. Though some surgeons claim that variations on the procedure are much more successful, there is little documentation of the variation in success rates between individual surgeons.
In this procedure, tissue from several structures in the back of the throat are removed to make the airway more open. This includes trimming the soft palate at the back of the roof of your mouth, the uvula, which dangles down from the roof of your throat, and some other tissues in the area.
There are several variations on this procedure, using laser energy or radiofrequency energy to perform all or part of the tissue removal. There isn’t enough evidence to support these alternatives as being significantly better.