Using Surgery To Prevent Snoring

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Sunday, February 15th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

Surgery may seem like a drastic measure to take when it comes to snoring and in reality it is. You’ll have seen throughout this site, advice on home-based remedies for snoring, and other natural ways to stop the problem.

But in some cases, surgery is certainly a must for some people and is therefore the necessary course of action to take. If snoring really drives your partner crazy and you’ve tried other possible solutions without success, then it might be time for you to look at surgery to prevent snoring.

There are several types of surgery but not all of them have the same effectiveness and each surgery has its own pros and cons and we will discuss some of the options in a moment.

If you have literally tried every snoring prevention device and over the counter remedy to no effect, and if you’re still finding yourself making chainsaw noises at night, then it may be time to schedule an appointment with your doctor for him to assess the problem.

Surgery For Widening Your Airways

Surgery to prevent snoring can widen the airways and ease your breathing, as this is often the root cause of snoring. One procedure that is used to prevent your snoring is Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty. It’s quite a mouthful to say and it certainly does a lot. When you go under the knife, essentially they will be removing your tonsils, part of the soft palate and the uvula.

Surgery using this procedure however has had mixed results in the past, with roughly about half of patients who have undergone treatment using this surgical procedure reporting any improvement after two years.

There are others who have found that within two years they have the same old problems again with snoring, and so it is important that you understand this.

Laser Procedures For Snoring

If the success rate of the above procedure is not appealing to you, then there is a surgery to prevent snoring that uses lasers. This procedure uses only local anesthetic, compared to the general anesthetic that has to be used in the above procedure.

The idea is that your uvula will be shortened with this procedure, and lasers are also used to vaporize parts of your soft palate with this surgical procedure. So this is high tech stuff!

This is generally the recommended procedure if you have already had your tonsils removed. However you should be warned that it is also not completely effective.

In some reported cases, although their snoring was much better than before, many people who have undergone the procedure reported that their sleeping partners were still not happy with their snoring.

Palate Stiffening Surgery

The last option we’ll look at today is surgery that involves stiffening the palate of the mouth. research has shown that it is considered to have been quite effective for many people, with a high percentage rate of people finding relief in the long term.

Ultimately however, surgery as you have seen above can be both successful and unsuccessful. If you think that you could benefit from surgery to prevent snoring then you should talk to your doctor, and they will of course explain the benefits, side effects and the risks involved with having surgery for you snoring problems.

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