Your Trusted Dental Care And Sleep apnea Provider
What is Sleep Apnea and How We Can Help
Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder characterized by repeated pauses in breathing or periods of shallow breathing during sleep. These pauses can last for a few seconds to minutes and can occur many times throughout the night, disrupting sleep and potentially leading to various health issues. The most common type is obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), where the airway becomes blocked during sleep.
How is it diagnosed?
How do i know?
If you believe or your physician feels you have sleep apnea, the first test is to get a sleep test. The sleep test can be done at home or in a lab setting.
During the sleep test, certain factors are accounted for, then counted and divided by the number of hours slept. The number that results define the severity of sleep apnea, and the treatment required. However, regardless of severity, sleep apnea is like pregnancy, you either have it or you don’t.
What is looked at in the sleep test?
In order to understand what it means, let’s take a moment to define what is going on. When the airway closes completely and your breathing completely stops for 10 seconds or more it is called apnea. When your breathing becomes shallow and you end up with a 30% or more decrease in air flow it is called hypopnea. We define obstructive sleep apnea by the number of times these events occur each hour. For example if you sleep 8 hours but have total of 24 of either apnea or hypopnea for the entire sleep period- your AHI (# of time apnea and hypopnea per hour) would be 24 divided by 8=3.
What do my results mean?
If your AHI is 5-15 , it is considered mild and means you average 5 to 15 times per hour that your breathing is interrupted enough to cause an arousal from deep sleep.
If your AHI is 15-30 , it is considered moderate and means you average 15-30 times per hour that your breathing is interrupted enough to cause an arousal from deep sleep.
If your AHI is over 30, it is considered severe and means you average over 30 arousals an hour that your breathing is interrupted enough to cause an arousal from deep sleep.
How is it treated?
Most commonly, sleep apnea is treated with a forced air device (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure or CPAP) in which you sleep with a mask on at night, and air is forced down your airway to keep the soft tissue at the opening of your throat from collapsing on itself.
Many people find this big bulky and uncomfortable and often don't wear it as much as they should and therefore are not getting the treatment necessary to help the problem.
An alternative to the CPAP is Oral Appliance Therapy (OAT). Oral Appliance Therapy uses a custom fabricated device that you wear similar to a nightguard and it slightly positions your jaw forward enough to pull the soft tissue obstructing your airway and keeps the airway open.