Surgery Has No Clear Benefit For Sleep Apnea

Surgery should not be the first treatment for a patient who suffers from obstructive sleep apnea - when the upper airways collapse during sleep - according to an article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), this week’s issue.

Obstructive sleep apnea, a common disorder, leads to loud snoring. Sometimes the person with this disorder can stop breathing completely for short period during his/her sleep.

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According to latest research, surgery will not give the clear benefits for the sleep apnea where as the long term treatments gave the better benefits when compared to it.

There is no age limit for sleep apnea, it can affect from the small kids to the older people. But, most of the sufferers with this disease are middle aged and over weight people.

The basic treatment which is suggested by the experts to solve the problem of sleep apnea is CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure).

Along with the CPAP machine, some other procedures are also included in it like weight control and alcohol management procedures. If it is controlled by this, then it’s ok, otherwise they opt to go for surgery.

Upper airway surgery is also one type of treatment which has become more popular in these days. Recently it was named as the first line of treatment which was suggested by more number of doctors to solve the problem of sleep apnea with in short period of time.

But, perfect results are not obtained with this treatment and most of the patients who have undergone this treatment said that it doesn’t help them properly in solving their problem.

It is also found that the surgery will have very limited impact on the patients. Even though it shows some improvements in the starting days after surgery, slowly the improvements will decrease and mostly these improvements cannot be seen after 2 years and more.

The latest research done by the experts has also proved that there are more chances to attain persistent adverse effects with the surgery. In order to prove this, they observed a group of people who have undergone the surgery for the sleep apnea.

They found that, out of all, 62% of the people attained some persistent adverse effects due to surgery for the sleep apnea like change in voice, difficulty in swallowing, taste disturbance, dry throat and smell disturbance.