A good night's sleep is essential to your health — but if you suffer from sleep-disordered breathing, you're not getting restorative sleep.
Sleep-disordered breathing refers to a wide spectrum of sleep disturbances, including snoring and obstructive sleep apnea, caused by collapse or blockage of your airway during sleep. Sleep surgery encompasses a range of procedures that correct these issues. Contact Dr Sumit Talwar, he will provide the best surgical treatment for all your sleeping disorders.
Left untreated, sleep-disordered breathing can lead to several health problems — including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke — and can even affect your immune system.
Nearly half of the adults snore, and over 25 percent are habitual snorers. Problem snoring and sleeping disorders are more frequent in males and people who are overweight and also with age. Snoring is bothersome to others but can also indicate a more serious condition known as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
OSA is characterized by multiple pauses in breathing greater than 10 seconds at a time due to upper airway narrowing or collapse. This lowers the blood's oxygen and causes the heart to work harder. Because the snorer does not get a good rest, they may be sleepy during the day, which decreases their performance. Untreated OSA can contribute to high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, and more.
What Are the Symptoms of OSA?
Symptoms associated with OSA can include:
- Loud snoring
- Pauses in breathing during sleep
- Waking up gasping or choking
- Waking up with a dry mouth or in sore throat
- Fatigue
- Frequent urination at night
- Morning headache
- Irritability, mood swings, depression, difficulty in concentration
- High blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, or other cardiac issues
What Causes OSA?
The noisy sounds of snoring occur when there is a partial obstruction to the flow of air through the passages at the back of the mouth and nose. This area is the collapsible part of the airway where the tongue and upper throat meet the soft palate and uvula.
Snoring occurs when these structures strike each other and vibrate during breathing.
Apnea occurs when the obstruction of airflow is more severe, leading to reduced, compromised, or completely blocked airflow while trying to breathe. Snoring may indicate problems with the tonsils and adenoids in children. In adults, the site of obstruction may be more complex to identify. Obstruction in an adult may be due to a combination of factors in different areas, making it more challenging to identify and treat.
What Other Factors Contribute to Snoring and Sleep Apnea?
Poor muscle tone in the tongue and throat—When muscles are too relaxed, the tongue falls back into the airway, or the throat muscles draw in from the sides into the airway. Alcohol or drugs cause sleepiness and may worsen muscle relaxation and obstruction.
The bulkiness of throat tissue—Children with large tonsils and adenoids often snore. Overweight people may have excess soft tissue in the neck that can lead to airway narrowing. Those with very large tongues are especially susceptible to snoring and OSA. Cysts or tumors are rare causes of airway narrowing.
Long soft palate and uvula—A long palate narrows the opening from the nose into the throat. The excessive length of the soft palate and uvula acts as a noisy flutter valve during relaxed breathing.
Obstructed nasal airways—A stuffy nose requires extra effort to pull air through it. This creates an exaggerated vacuum in the throat that tightens together the floppy tissues of the throat. Sometimes, snoring only occurs during allergy season or with a cold or sinus infection. Deformities of the nose or nasal septum, such as a deviated septum (a deformity of the wall that separates one nostril from the other), can also cause snoring and OSA.
Types of Sleep Surgeries
OSA generally has various anatomical causes with multiple potential levels of airway obstruction; therefore, many different surgical procedures have been developed for its treatment and usually yield better results than single-level surgery.
Nasal surgery
Any surgery performed on the outside or inside of the nose is commonly used in reconstructive and cosmetic surgery.
Skeletal surgery
Also known as Maxillomandibular advancement (MMA), a form of facial skeletal surgery that advances the jaws to expand the airway, is used in treating sleep disorders.
Tongue surgery
A surgical procedure to make the tongue firmer and less collapsible during sleep or to remove tongue tissue to reduce its volume; is often used in treating sleep apnea.
Palate surgery
A combination of surgical procedures to rearrange the pharyngeal wall and open the airway, decreasing the possibility of collapse, is used to treat sleep apnea.
It's important to realize that surgery is not an appropriate treatment for all patients. Dr. Sumit Talwar, the best surgeon for sleeping disorders in Bangalore, performs extremely safe procedures. Still, every surgery comes with some risk, so it's important to carefully explore the risk-to-benefit ratio with your doctor.
