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jeepdoctor wrote:One question should be, "Doctor, where is my obstruction site and how will surgery correct the root cause." Another, "What is the long term success rate on the surgery you are proposing?

EXCELLENT point!
Your ENT might also be able to give you a hint on the tendency of a dental device working or not. You have to be paying attention to gather this tidbit though.

My ENT was an excellent ENT, but had not a clue about dental devices. What she could tell me though is that moving my jaw forward through surgery MIGHT be a significant improvement on my apnea, although she did NOT recommend going to that level of drastic surgery, and in fact wouldn't push any surgery past getting my nose working, as long as CPAP worked for me.

I had to make the leap of logic myself, that if surgery to move my jaw forward MIGHT help, then it was good odds that moving my jaw forward mechanically at night would also help. And it would be a heck of a lot more reversible than surgery if it didn't work out!

It worked....for me anyway.

YMMV

I asked this question of my sleep doc, "Doctor, where is my obstruction site?" His answer was that he didn't know and that knowing wasn't important because CPAP would take care of it. How's that for a flippant answer?

my understanding of this kind of surgery is that it is only likely to be successful in the mildest of cases- most of the people i have seen talk about it have found it to be in effective but the other thing i know is from first hand observation as a nurse. This kind of surgery to the soft palate can be incredibly painful! big hulky guys who have seemed really tough have struggled with the pain in the early stages- don't get me wrong, there is good pain managment offered but these procedures are on very sensitive tissues that have a high concentration of nerve endings (the mouth is a sense organ after all!) -i would want a pretty high chance of success for a procedure that can be so tough to go through!

as for antidepressants only being an option for 30 days! i am not sure where that has come from. oviously being able to sleep without medications is the best option but it is not always possible- i have severe chronic pain that is managed by drugs that are in the antidepressant group- the main reason they were prescribed was to help with the pain that made sleeping a re challenge. whilst standard sleeping tablets build up a tolerance level quickly so that short term use is desirable, i have been on an SSRI called mirtazipine for some time and i find that it helps me get good sleep whithout being overly sedated or feeling rough the next day and i have used them for considerably longer than 30 days! so if you need chemical help i would be asking why 30 days only was instructed

Actually I would like the surgery if I could get it. I think that will be my next step. I;m having difficulty just seeing a specialist in Lethbridge