How to treat sleep apnea?

How to treat sleep apnea? In this video, Jeffrey E. Baylor, M.D., F.A.C.S., a board-certified otolaryngologist at the Ear, Nose, Throat & Plastic Surgery Associates describes the latest treatments for sleep apnea and the how they work.

“If you’ve gotten to this video, it’s very likely that you’ve been diagnosed with sleep apnea,” says Dr. Baylor. “Now we need to talk about how we can treat it. Your treatment is going to depend on the severity of your sleep apnea. For minor sleep apnea, we can treat it with certain devices that can bring your jaw forward while you sleep, or sometimes we can do injection procedures in your soft palate to open things up.”

Other treatments for sleep apnea can include:

Oral appliance
Injection snoreplasty
Radiofrequency reduction

“For the most part, sleep apnea is treated by CPAP - continuous positive airway pressure,” says Dr. Baylor. “CPAP is a mask that goes over your face and blows air into your nose and mouth to make sure you’re getting enough oxygen at night. People will tolerate this at various levels. There are many different types of masks. Some of masks will cover the entire face, some will cover the nose, and there is even one that only goes into the nose called a nasal pillow. All of the masks are usually prescribed by the sleep center.”

“If you are unable to tolerate CPAP, then we have to start talking about procedures to try and give you more room (in the airway),” Dr. Baylor continues. “Usually, we start off with diagnostic sleep endoscopy. We take you to the operating room, give you an IV that allows you to go to sleep, and then we take a look with the scope.”

“When I’m looking with the scope I can see where the collapse is occurring. Sometimes it can occur at the back of the nose, sometimes in the soft palate, and sometimes it’s lower at the level of the base of the tongue. Based on that, we can discuss what areas need to be treated to try and give you better breathing at night.”

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