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CHICAGO, Oct. 25 — Surgically widening the airway — a procedure called uvulopalatopharyngoplasty — can eliminate obstructive sleep apnea in about a third of patients, a researcher said here.Action Points
Explain to interested patients that obstructive sleep apnea increases the risk of many other diseases, as well as having ill effects of its own.

Note that this retrospective study shows that a surgical procedure to widen the airway can improve apnea, as measured in the sleep lab.

Note, too, that this study was published as an abstract and presented orally at a conference. The data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed publication.

For the remaining patients, the procedure can reduce the pressure needed in a continuous positive airway pressure machine, according to Akram Khan, M.D., of the University of Florida in Jacksonville.

The procedure - known as UPPP - has long been thought by surgeons to provide about a 50% improvement in sleep apnea, Dr. Khan said at CHEST 2007, the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians.

“But there are not much data on outcomes (for obstructive sleep apnea) before and after, so I wanted to look at that,” Dr. Khan said.

With colleagues from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where he was on a fellowship, Dr. Khan looked at all 978 cases of UPPP at the clinic between January 1988 and August 2005.

Of those, he said, only 63 (about 6%) had had polysomnography within six months before and after the surgery. They were mostly male, with an average age of 42.1 years and an average body mass index of 33.7.

Their results generally supported the surgeons’ view that the procedure is beneficial:

The average apnea-hypopnea index was reduced 54.8%, from 62.6 to 28.3. The average arousal index decreased 38.7%, from 58.3 to 35.9. Respiratory related arousals decreased by 27.5%.Nadir oxygen saturation improved from 73.9% on average to 80.7%. Correspondingly, the percentage of time spent with oxygen saturation less than 90% fell from 25.8% to 15.9%.All changes were statistically significant at P
Primary source: CHEST
Source reference:
Khan A, et al “Outcomes of uvulopalatopharyngoplasty in patients with obstructive sleep apnea” CHEST Meeting Abstracts 2007; 132: 504.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 9:10 pm and is filed under General health, Improvement, News, Stress, Sleep. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.