ISSN: 2044-9038 (Print) 2044-9046 (Electronic)

Clinical Practice

Sleep After Surgery

 Sleep surgery may be a surgery performed to treat sleep disordered breathing. Sleep disordered breathing may be a spectrum of disorders that has snoring, upper airway resistance syndrome, and obstructive apnea . These surgeries are performed by surgeons trained in otolaryngology, oral maxillofacial surgery, and craniofacial surgery. Most obstructive apnea sufferers have multiple points of obstruction in their airway and thus require multilevel sleep surgery so as to maximize the efficacy of treatment. a scientific review of the literature and meta-analysis showed that multilevel sleep surgery achieves a 60.3% apnea hypopnea index (AHI) reduction. This reduction in apnea severity via surgical means compares well against the AHI reduction for best case CPAP patients where an overall AHI reduction of 66% was achieved. Even single level surgical intervention in apnea, which demonstrates a lesser degree of AHI reduction, showed a 31% survival benefit in comparison against those using CPAP as therapy. Children with obstructive apnea typically have enlarged tonsils and adenoid tissue. Surgery on children is over 80% successful by simply performing an adenoidectomy and tonsillectomy. Those less likely to profit from an adenotonsillectomy are obese children and people with other medical problems, like mongolism .A sub-group of youngsters may have occult laryngomalacia, where the tissue directly above the vocal cords (epiglottis, arytenoids) collapses into the airway during sleep. These children may enjoy a supraglottoplasty to assist prevent that tissue from collapsing into the airway.  

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