Snoring Surgery

Why Surgery Can Be A Bad Idea

Snoring surgery? One of the nicest things about living in the 21st century is the amount of surgical options available to more people, including more and more people in the developing world (though, obviously, not enough). 

Quite sincerely, countless numbers of lives have been outright saved, or inestimably improved, due to surgery.  I doubt you’d find anyone who would absolutely conclude that surgery, as a concept, is a mistake; or that we should long for pre-surgery days, where infections and ailments so easily morphed into life-threatening conditions. 

Are We Addicted to Surgery?

Yet (and yes, there’s always a yet!), there is a bit of a cloud attached to this surgical silver lining.  We now live in a world that is, for all intents and purposes, addicted to surgery.  It has become the first option – and in some cases, the only option – that both doctors and patients consider when trying to remedy a problem. 

Advances in medical technology have played a role here as well; transforming within the span of a generation a surgery that once required 7-10 days of hospital care, to an “in by 2:00pm, out by 4:00pm” outpatient experience. 

And since many (enhanced) medical insurance plans cover many types of surgery – all it needs is a doctor’s okay – it’s not uncommon to come across people who have had a litany of surgeries over the past few years.  They might even know the surgeons by name, and have a favorite parking spot at the hospital.

Snoring and Surgery Is Often a Bad Combo

It is in light of all this is that we look at snoring, and at surgery.  In a nutshell: the two don’t mix; and this is a bit of a problem to people who are persuaded by medical doctors (or by surgery-addicted colleagues, friends, and relatives) to go under the knife to get rid of that “pesky snoring problem”.  These people may be well intentioned, but they don’t have all of the facts.

One of the things that they probably don’t (yet) know – again, not deliberately – is that surgery is not an exact science.  It may look that way, especially when one sees the army of hi-tech equipment that clogs many operating rooms and makes one think that they’re at NASA Mission Control instead of a local hospital.

Surgery Is Exploratory!

However – and even surgeons will readily admit this (or their insurance companies will if they won’t) – surgery is, always has been, and always will be, somewhat exploratory. 

True, some surgeries are better known and more ordinary than others, and the chance of a successful outcome for, say, a quick knee surgery might be radically more predictable than a kidney transplant.  But the bottom line is that both of these procedures are surgical, which means that they both have risks. 

This, indeed, is something of a wake-up call for people who have equated surgery with certainty. 

Snoring Surgery is not Always Successful

So how does this relate to snoring?  Quite bluntly, it’s this: whereas some surgeries are a bit more tried and tested than others, surgery designed to stop, mitigate, or treat snoring have been less than successful for many people. 

Why is this the case?  Surgery to treat snoring is designed, ultimately, to increase the airflow in the trachea; and the most common surgical way to do this is to cut away some of the tissue that is clogging up that passageway.  Is this a wise choice? 

Possibly, yes, for some snorers this can be a remedy; but not for all, and certainly not for most.  This is because the problem of snoring is often much deeper than a constricted trachea. 

Yes, as we discussed earlier in this book that is how snoring manifests itself as sound: air from the lungs vibrates in the airflow. 

Yet for many people, this is not the ultimate cause of snoring; that cause, like many medical ailments, is often something of a mystery, and can change significantly from person to person.

The example on the following page will help shed some light on this potentially complex point.

An Example: From Snoring to Insurance Let’s look at something simple and non-medical: car insurance.  Let’s take 20 people who are considered bad drivers by their insurance companies.  As a result of that dubious distinction, all of these drivers are going to face a premium increase of $500 when they’re insurance is renewed. Now, seen at a distance, it might appear as though all of these drivers are in the same boat (or same car, as it were).  And given that assumption, a method to deal with this problem might be to simply give each of these people an extra $500 in cash.  Really, as strange as that sounds, this is a way to solve this problem for each of these 20 drivers: they need to find $500 more to pay their insurance premium, and hence, that is what this so-called solution is going to do.  Yet is this wise?  No! Some of those drivers – probably more than a few of them – are not going to actually correct why they might be classified as a “bad driver” by their insurance company.  They simply won’t know why they’re bad drivers, and hence, some of them will likely remain a “bad driver”, and face higher insurance premiums next year – but this time after a few more accidents or tickets. As you can easily see, the real cause of the so-called “bad driving” isn’t solved when each person is given a nice gift of $500 with which to pay his or her increased insurance premium.  And since the problem isn’t really solved, the bad driving can crop up again, and cause financial problems and even worse, it can endanger health and safety. So when people readily turn to trachea tissue-cutting surgery to cure their snoring, they may quite easily be overlooking the real root cause of the snoring; something that may be related to diet, sleep position, jaw or tongue dysfunction, lifestyle, genetics, or be an indication of an even more serious health problem; an indication that could be dangerously suppressed (temporarily, at least), after a seemingly successful surgery. Going to surgery as an easy, off-the cuff solution for snoring, is like giving these bad drivers $500 in cash.  It may seem to solve their problem, but for many, it will just be a temporary fix; masking even deeper problems that can lead to severe consequences down the road, including Sleep apnea.

Other Reasons to Just Say NO to Snoring Surgery

Again, we return to the unfortunately familiar theme that surgery has become an easy first option for many physicians who, for a variety of reasons (including, sometimes, financial ones) find themselves recommending surgery as an almost off the cuff solution to a serious snoring problem.

Sometimes, what is lost in this snoring surgical-obsession are some very basic and established risks.  For those who are not immediately familiar with such risks, they include: 

• post-operative medical conditions, including aesthetic and cosmetic concerns

• infection from hospitals (including the emerging antibiotic-resistant “superbugs”

• scarring of tissues that can lead to painful inflammation
 
• expensive follow-up to surgery

• time consuming follow-up which may cause extended periods of leave from work (potentially adding to the overall cost of the salary in lost wages/salary)

• expensive medications to control swelling

• possible damage to speech, including changing voice

• possible problems with swallowing

• possible hemorrhaging

• possible uncomfortable and distracting dry mouth

• possible intense ear pain

Snoring Surgery Reviews

It’s necessary and well-worth repeating (sorry, but it is…) that, overall, surgery is often a truly wondrous means of solving, or at least alleviating, some serious health problems. 

Nobody wants to return to a pre-surgical world, where procedures that are swiftly addressed today would otherwise render a sufferer in agony for years; or perhaps even hasten an early death.

So it should not be surmised that the view in this book is that surgery is inherently bad; because it’s not.  But surgery is simply a tool, and one that should be used only when necessary (not unlike any other tool). 

The problem is that some people rely on surgery as an automatic fix.  What’s that old saying: if all you have is a hammer in your hand, then everything looks like a nail?  For some people, this is regrettably true when it comes to surgery; every health ailment that they see is worthy of surgery. 

Yet these same people would probably seriously reconsider their views when faced with the substantiated evidence that surgery is not often working for snorers (and their loved ones). 

On the following page is a rundown of the most common snoring surgeries; and why they aren’t working as well as people expect them to.
 

Name of Surgery	Designed to…	Reported Problems…
Tracheostomy	Create an opening in the trachea (sometimes this is called a tracheotomy)	û       irritating to tissues and possible scarring û       requires follow-up surgery û       nasal secretions can clog air pipe and lead to breathing difficulties
UPPP (Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty)	expand the airway and end snoring	û       expensive û       may require follow-up surgery of obstruction occurs again û       post-operation infection û       possible speech defects û       higher than normal hemorrhage risk û       swallowing problems û       not effective for Sleep Apnea

Name of Surgery	Designed to…	Reported Problems…
LAUP (Laser Assisted Uvuloplasty)	Uses lasers to remove uvula and obstructing tissues, without removing tonsils or lateral tissues	û       dry mouth û       Changes to voice (to be avoided by people who require their voice to earn their living!) û       pain in the ears û       unpredictable success rate û       can mask deeper problems and/or lead to new complications
CAPSO (Cautery-assisted palatal stiffening operation)	Burns the palate in order to stiffen it against vibration, and removes the mucosa along the uvula.	û       post-operation discomfort and pain û       currently in experimental stages (unproven) û       difficulty predicting if surgery will be successful û       expensive

And there are a few new surgical options that are gaining some attention, including somnoplasty and snoreplasty.  Like CAP SO, these procedures are unproven and the success rate, and long-term impact, is not yet known. 

Overall, then, while snoring surgery can be useful and effective for some sufferers (and their families, roommates, neighbors, heck, even their pets!), it’s clear that surgery has not proven to a panacea, offering risk-free cures for this dangerous, and potentially life-affecting condition.

Fortunately, however, there are some proven non-surgical remedies – some quite old and some rather new – that are helping hundreds of millions of people deal effectively, responsibly, and safely with their snoring problem.  We now look at several of those non-surgical remedies under the topic "Non Surgical Remedies".

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