pillar treatment and cpap relations

[skinnysleepapnea]

I am not well corrected by cpap. I use it every night but I still wake up 3 or 4 times a night. It only helps me a little bit.
I would like to try the pillar procedure... yes, its a lot of cash but I'm willing to take the risk.
However it has been intimated to me that my sleep doctors are at war with the pillar people and may not treat me any more going forward should I need to still continue with the cpap (hoping that at least the 2 together might improve things.
Question 1) does any one have experience with the 2 together?
2) do the two kinds of treatments have speaking relationships or not? Will my sleep specialist stll treat me if i get the pillar treatment.

[Janknitz]

Sounds like something you need to take up directly with your sleep doctors.

From what you have said I'm guessing that they recommend against the pillar procedure and have resorted to a type of blackmail to dissuade you from pursuing it by threatening not to treat you if you have the procedure. What you need to know from them is whether they have some sort of personal vendetta against the particular ENT's for some reason of if they think that the procedure is a really bad idea for some reason.

And if they think it's a really bad idea, I think you owe it to yourself to sit down and listen to their concerns. You may decide to proceed anyway, and perhaps you will want more supportive sleep doctors, but you should go into a procedure like this knowing what the concerns are.

[paulw]

I went to an ENT to be evaluated for possibly under-going a Pillar procedure for snoring.
He sent me to a Pulmonary Dr. who ordered a sleep study to make sure I didn’t have a more serious condition – OSA (which I did).
From the ENT’s perspective, if xPAP worked, great. If I couldn’t tolerate xPAP, he suggested I could come back and talk about Pillars, but he never suggested Pillars as an effective treatment for OSA.
The two seemed to be on the same page regarding treatment options.

[RDawkinsPhDMPH]

First of all, there is no excuse for your sleep doctor to take that attitude. But we should give him/her the benefit of the doubt and assume he/she was just joking.

The pillar procedure stiffens the palate. But the airway collapse with sleep apnea is not usually just a floppy palate. So, in my experience, the pillar procedure helps with snoring but is only occasionally effective with sleep apnea and then, mostly only in cases of mild apnea. Of course, there will always be a few miracle cases.

There is, however, no reason you should not be able to use the CPAP after the pillar procedure and it might also reduce the pressure you need.

Unfortunately, sleep apnea is not just a "plumbing" problem.