Treatments for Severe Sleep Apnea

Foreign. Doctor Charles Moak with Allure Medical and I want to talk to you about severe sleep apnea. Severe sleep apnea is defined as the AHI score apnea hypopnea index score which is measured by either a home wearable device or in a sleep lab of over 30. That means 30 times per hour you're having an apneic event where you're not breathing with low oxygen saturation or what's called a hypopnea event which is very similar. This is very, very serious. This is the most serious form of sleep apnea, therefore we call it severe sleep apnea. Significant health problems occur with untreated severe sleep apnea and increases your chance of premature death. So it's very important critical that you treat this if you're diagnosed or identified to have severe sleep apnea. The current guidelines the American Society of American Academy of Sleep Medicine and is a CPAP machine and this is a device you wear over your nose or your mouth to force air in your lungs when you stop breathing at night to protect your organs from damage. This is the common treatment that's been around for decades and is very safe. Some people choose not to use a CPAP machine because it's uncomfortable, they don't like it, it dries their mouth out or hurts their face or it's inconvenient. They may consider other things such as a surgery. There are surgeries available for sleep apnea. There's an implantable device that goes in your chest with a wire to your to your throat that helps stimulate breathing at night. This may or may not be covered by your insurance. And there's dental appliances that can be used that are probably insufficient for severe sleep apnea. So it's critical that you treat it. We offer something called apnea lase. So it's a laser based on the night lays technology. Night lase has been around been used for over 10 years to reduce snoring. So originally used to shrink the tissues in the back of the throat to reduce snoring at night. But newer technology and techniques have shown us how to reduce or reverse the sleep apnea score. On average doing three treatments two weeks apart, there's an average reduction of 67% in the AHI score. So that means that somebody who has severe sleep apnea, let's say it's a 30, which would be severe and it gets reversed by 67% it would become a 10 which now would be moderate sleep apnea and and it still should be treated further. So if you have a severe sleep apnea and you choose not to do CPAP and you want to reverse it with night laser apnea lays, you probably would need more than three treatments and it'll only be very much depending on how you respond to the laser. We can't predict very much an event, but if it's severe, you'll need more than the three treatments that are done in the clinical study showing 2/3 reduction. But if you have severe sleep apnea, it doesn't matter how you treat it, this must be treated. This is a very serious health condition. Even though you may not have any particular symptoms from it, it's critical that this is treated. Thank you.