An outpatient surgery to alleviate sleep apnea, LAUP
If your case of sleep apnea isn’t severe you might want to ask your doctor about LAUP . Laser Assisted Uvula Palatoplasty vaporizes the uvula and parts of the soft tissue that obstructs the patient’s night time sleeping. The best part about this procedure is that you don’t have to stay over night and the doctor uses a local anesthesia. The whole procedure is done while you are sitting in an upright chair; I guess it is like being at the dentist. Unfortunately you can’t it all done in one sitting, it takes about 5 visits to get it done. These visits are spaced out between 4 and 5 weeks presumably to let the discomfort in your throat to subside. After each procedure the patient will feel as if they have a sore throat which can be treated with medicine. Since I have severe sleep apnea I’m not a candidate for this procedure. But if your OSA isn’t severe (according to your sleep study) you should definitely ask your doctor about it. Last week I posted about throat exercises to help ...