Palette Shaving, Implants and Uvula Removal

[faceless041974]

I have been diagnosed with mild sleep apnea with alpha intrusions. I guess right now my treatment options are a dental appliance,CPAP, or having my pallette shaved, implants put in and or having my uvula removed. Right now Im leaning towards the surgery to remove my uvula and have the implants put in or my pallette shaved. I understand that its supposed to be very painful but Im desperate for sleep. I was on CPAP before and it didnt help me and i couldnt sleep with all the hardware. Im leary of going the dental appliance route because I dont want to spend money on something that may or may not help. Any insights?

[Snoozy Q]

I have mild OSA and can sympathize -- even with "mild" OSA, the impact of impaired sleep can be awful.

I don't have experience with the surgeries, but what I've read on this board would have me checking out probability of success, expertise of my doctor, and why he thinks it'll work for me very carefully.

Try a search on "UPPP" (I think it is 3 p's -- maybe its just UPP) or "pillar implant" on this board.

As for CPAP, if you want to give it another go, folks here can give you lots of good advice on what to try to make it work for you. let us know what mask you used, what kinds of problems/discomfort you had, and maybe we can offer some suggestions.

[DreamStalker]

Just ouch!

Too bad you couldn't make the cpap work ... I found it quite painless and very effective.

... which ever route you decide to take, I hope it doesn't lead back to where you started.

Best of luck!

[Sleepless_in_LM]

Had partial Uvula removal, tonsils, adnoids, tongue base reduction, and nasal turbinate reduction in early December. I can attest to the fact that the recovery is NASTY. I went into it not expecting to be "cured" and indeed it did not cure my OSA, but it did significantly reduce my pressures needed. Now I started with severe OSA (AHI around 60) so without another sleep study, no way to know how much it did.

To complicate things, I am now 6 weeks out and I still have a bad sore throat because my body is no dissolving the Vycral stitches. It has been by far the toughest recovery from surgery I have endured, and I have had three back surgeries and a shoulder surgery. For what it is worth...

[Wulfman]

As Snoozy Q mentioned, the UPPP procedures have been (for the most part) unsuccessful for the long term. Most of the those having it done, end up back on CPAP therapy sooner or later.
If I were you, I'd try to figure out what didn't work with your CPAP therapy before, and give it (at least) another shot. You'll get lots of help here.

Failure is NOT an option! Your health (and more) is at stake.

Best wishes,

Den

[mattman]

There appears to be a great deal more active users of surgical and dental options over at talk about sleep.
You can find thier message boards here:

http://www.talkaboutsleep.com/message-boards/

I check there now and again and there are many very active users there who have been through those options successfully.

mattman

[CowboyDave]

I had a UPPP in 2000, it was the most painful thing I have ever gone through. It did work for a few years, but here I am on CPAP 7 years later. I was warned that the UPPP was ineffective, but I just couldn't see myself wearing a mask every night.

Now after only a month I feel great and have no problem with CPAP. I wish I could go back and not have had that surgery. The recovery is awful, every time you swallow, yawn(the worst), cough the pain is terrible and pain meds did not help. My advice would be only have the surgery as a last resort.

Good luck with your treatment.

[gracie97]

I also was dx'd with mild OSA and alpha intrusions which were assumed to be due to a significant upper airway resistance syndrome (UARS) factor. Wasn't offered any options but CPAP, despite the fact that my uvula and soft palate are abnormally long.

You might look into laser reduction of the soft palate and uvula (called LAUP, and, sorry, I don't know off-hand what that stands for). It isn't supposed to be as drastic or painful. Like other surgical procedures for OSA, it also doesn't tend to get people off CPAP. However, I've wondered, since it often improves sleep apnea, if it might make the difference between having to use CPAP or not for those of us who have only mild apnea.

I've read that treatment of nasal stuffiness (e.g. with very low dose steroid sprays and OTC mast cell stabilizing spray) often improves UARS quite a bit. Nasal congestion is at its worst in the early morning hours, when most of us are asleep, so people often don't realize what a significant factor it can be. Those seemed to help me, but not quite enough to not go on CPAP. (Perhaps if that were combined with the LAUP...?)

I was convinced at first that I could not tolerate CPAP. But eventually, after some months of frustration and a lot of advice from this list -- a comfortable mask is essential and that can take a lot of exploration to find -- I have reached the point of being able to sleep through the night with it. You might also.

[However I'm getting ever more concerned about the impact of the inhalation/exhalation ratio disruption with CPAP. Most people here seem to think I'm nuts to worry about that and have noticed no problems that way, but I think it increases my stress level. So I'm starting to gear up for the big battle to get non-CPAP treatments. CPAP's upside may far outweigh its downside for people with pretty bad apnea, but I'm not sure that is true for me or everybody with sleep breathing problems.]

Of course if you happen to be overweight, you might also consider addressing that as a way of trying to reduce the mild apnea enough to not need CPAP.

Hope you'll post again about your progress, be it surgery or CPAP.

Grace