Surgery for Snorers

Surgery should always be a last resort in your effort to stop snoring. Personally, I would never recommend snoring surgery to anyone as the problem can be solved with the numerous home remedies recommended on this site. Should you proceed with surgery, beware of adverse side effects. Procedures to cure snoring include:

Uvulopalathopharyngoplasty

Whew, that was long! Basically, it involves removing excess throat tissues such as tonsils and parts of the soft palate to expand the airway. There is also laser-assisted uvuloplatoplasty (LAUP), which uses a laser to remove part of the uvula and palate. More than one session may be needed with LAUP.  These surgeries are quite invasive and must be done by a qualified specialist. However, these operations have risks of adverse side effects.

Some patients have reported the development of severe sleep apnea as a result of damage to their airway caused by pharnygeal surgery. Currently, the American Medical Association does not approve of the use of lasers to perform operations on the pharynx or uvula.

Radio-frequency tissue ablation (somnoplasty)

In this type of surgery, doctors uses a low-intensity radiofrequency signal to remove part of the soft palate to reduce snoring. It’s an outpatient procedure performed using local anesthesia. The technique causes slight scarring of the soft palate, which may help to reduce snoring. The effectiveness of this newer procedure needs further study.

The most dangerous risk is that enough scar tissue could form within the throat as a result of the incisions to make the airway narrower than it was prior to surgery, thus diminishing the airspace in the velopharynx. As scarring can occur and is an individual trait, it is difficult for a surgeon to predict how much a person might be predisposed to scarring. This will cause further complications later in life and it is something you must consider very seriously if you finally decide to go ahead with it.

Coblation-channeling

 It is an even newer type of procedure using radiofrequency energy. Unlike somnoplasty and others which heats or shrinks tissue, coblation-channeling clears blocked airways by both shrinking and removing tissue.
Doctors can also inject sclerosing liquid into soft palate tissue to cause irritation and scarring. This tightens the soft palate, making it less likely to rub against the tongue or tonsils and cause snoring.

If snoring stems from the nose, nasal surgery to remove obstructions in the nose or to correct a deviated septum may also help you stop snoring.

The drawback is that although in the short term (surgical procedures) may be very effective, over the long haul, most people are snoring again. I strongly encourage you to try out the stop snoring solutions listed on the site. Who knows – you might get rid of snoring without paying a bomb for surgery!