Surgery That Can Help Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea in varying degrees is a common condition which anybody from the extremely young, middle aged or extremely old can suffer from. Two different types of sleep apnea exist and methods of treatment and prevention depend entirely upon which type of sleep apnea a person suffers from. Sometimes, a person may suffer from both types.

A brief overview of the types of sleep apnea:

Obstructive Sleep Apnea: Obstruction within the upper airways is the problem here. Obstructions may be anything from excessive fat tissue (particularly a problem for the obese), enlarged tonsils and adenoids, inflammations or less commonly abscesses or tumours. Sometimes the tongue relaxing and falling back over the airways is the problem also.

Commonly, surgery is done to remove the tonsils and adenoids if they are enlarged and causing problems. A person may have other surgical procedures done to widen the airways or cut away or reduce obstructing tissues. Surgery such as this may be done with a laser or by traditional surgical methods. Surgery can be done to move the tongue muscles forward to help prevent the tongue from falling back over the airways.

An indirect method of curing Obstructive Sleep Apnea is to tackle obesity. As obesity can be a major cause of sleep apnea, a gastric bypass is a form of surgery that can help sleep apnea by helping a person to lose weight fast.

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Central Sleep Apnea: This form of sleep apnea is due to brain signal problems, which results in the lungs not been told to breath by the brain during sleep. There is no surgery that can help sleep apnea of this kind.

Mixed Sleep Apnea: Sometimes a person suffers from both Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Central Sleep Apnea, and they call in this category. Again, as far as surgery, nothing can be done for Central Sleep Apnea, but its possible surgery can be done to lessen the effects of Obstructive Sleep Apnea.