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There are few surgical options to treat obstructive sleep apnea. They may include fixing a deviated septum or shrinking down swollen, nasal turbinates, a good ear nose throat doctor can do this. Sometimes they’ll do a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy and even shave away some of the upper soft palate to make more room in the back of the airway. We also may do a huge surgery. That’s not frequently performed, but still is performed to help treat sleep apnea. This is literally advancing the jaw. Breaking some bones are involved, but bringing the jaw forward would make more room at the back of the throat to treat sleep apnea. A new surgical procedure that’s currently being performed is actually implanting a small device into the chest wall that has electrical stimulation to the back of a tongue. And that prevents the tongue from being floppy and flimsy during the night. So it won’t allow it to occlude the airway. It’s actually controlled by a small work remote control, just like for the TV. And it’s turned on at night when a person goes to bed and then begins to give gradual electrical stimulation to that tongue. And this too works to treat obstructive sleep apnea.
