Surgery or NO surgery

General Discussion on any topic relating to CPAP and/or Sleep Apnea.
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Sleepless_in_LM
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Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2006 12:08 pm
Location: South Central Wisconsin
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Surgery or NO surgery

Post by Sleepless_in_LM » Mon Nov 27, 2006 3:48 pm

I am scheduled to have surgery soon, in part to improve my OSA, and am looking for opinions.

A little background: I recently had spinal fusion in the neck and so from now till year end I have no out of pocket costs. I went to see my primary physician for strep throat (I get it about 3 times a winter), and he suggested I have my tonsils out. I then went and saw my sleep doc because things weren't going well and he sugested I see an ENT and discuss surgery with him. I had ruled that option out early on, but thought with the tonsil thing it was worth a talk.

So the ENT wants to remove part of the uvula, and then sew the remaining portion back onto the soft pallet, remove my tonsils, remove my adnoids, shrick the tongue with some radio waves, and then shrink the nasal turbinates with the same radio wave procedure. When I asked him about just doing tonsils only, he said the pain would be no worse if we do evreything and probably will be a bit better. He also was very honest in saying he didn't think it would cure my OSA, but he thought it would help considerably.

So... anyone have this done? Thoughts/comments? I just finished three weeks on an auto spirit, and keeping track from the screen, my nightly 95% pressures ranged from 15.6 to 8.8, so I am hoping to stabalize that number a bit. I know the recovery will not be pleasant.

Thanks!


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