OSA Surgery

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Anchor lead: What are surgical options for treating obstructive sleep apnea? Elizabeth Tracey reports

You’ve been diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, and you’ve tried machines to ease your breathing at night but can’t tolerate them. Now what? Robin Yang, an OSA expert at Johns Hopkins, describes one surgical approach to treating the condition.

Yang: We do something called orthognathic surgery. Or maxillary-mandibular advancement. The oral cavity and the nasal cavity is a three dimensional box. There’s only so much room in that box. Teeth are in that box, your tongue, your soft palate. Once that box gets filled up air can’t flow through that box because it’s filled, and so certain treatment management can come in the form of trying to increase the size of that box, not only reducing the contents of what is in that box but making the box bigger.  :31

Yang says people who are considering surgery should have exhausted all other options first, and should select a center that has a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to the procedure. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.