What is Sleep Apnea?
Sleep apnea is severe respiratory snoring for more than 10 seconds with severe snoring during sleep. Sleep apnea, a disease that must be taken seriously, is a very common condition.
What Causes Sleep Apnea?
The most common cause of sleep apnea is that the muscles in the throat and soft palate relax during sleep to block the passage of air. Being overweight, tonsils too large and nasal flesh growth can also cause sleep apnea. Sleep apnea can occur in both adults and children.
What are the symptoms of sleep apnea?
The most important symptom of sleep apnea is the cessation of breathing during sleep. Other symptoms of sleep apnea are restlessness during sleep, snoring, sweating, dry mouth, reflux, resting in the morning and not being able to wake up tired.
Apnea is an important disease that causes deterioration of sleep order and quality due to respiratory arrest. If the breathing stops for 10 seconds during sleep, the amount of oxygen in the blood decreases. This can cause cardiac arrhythmia and sudden death during sleep.
Sleep apnea should be suspected if snoring is accompanied by excessive sleep and irritability during the day, fatigue, forgetfulness, distractions and learning disabilities. Headache after waking up in the morning, dry mouth, frequent urination at night, excessive sweating during sleep are the symptoms of sleep apnea.
What is the Treatment of Sleep Apnea?
Sleep apnea should be evaluated primarily by sleep test and sleep endoscopy. In sleep endoscopy, a mild drowsiness is created before the patient is fully anesthetized, and the soft palate, small tongue and tongue root are examined with a special device. Thus, it is more accurately evaluated whether surgery is necessary.
In the treatment of apnea, some patients undergo surgical treatment. The rate of benefit from surgery increases up to 70%. Patients with severe apnea that cannot benefit from surgical treatment are treated with a set of devices during sleep.
