What are some of the treatments for sleep apnea?

Video Overview

Hi, I'm Stephen Schendel. I'm board certified in plastic and oral maxillofacial surgery and have been in practice for over 30 years. I'm a professor emeritus at Stanford University and directory of Face Center LA. What are some of the treatments for sleep apnea? The first, and what we call the gold standard, is a CPAP. This is where you wear a max at night which will give you oxygen or air under pressure and alleviate the symptoms and causes of obstructive sleep apnea. Sometimes if your sleep apnea is not that severe you can wear a dental splint which will position your jaw forward. In many cases a surgery is also indicated, and there are several surgical procedures that we do to help snoring or decrease snoring, but also open up your airway permanently. This is really important for people that can't wear CPAP. About 48-49% of the individuals on CPAP don't wear it on a regular basis, so it's not doing them any good, and they really can't tolerate it. Those individuals need to have some other treatment, and surgery is the main treatment to relieve the obstructive problem and sleep apnea. This is not a condition that you can ignore and not treat.