Dental Implant Center of Rockville provides sleep apnea treatment in Rockville, MD. Call 301-294-8700 to learn more and schedule an appointment.
Sleep apnea is one of the few disorders that can cause a dramatic decrease in someone’s quality of life without them even knowing they have it. That’s because often the only signs of sleep apnea are a feeling of never being well-rested, even after 8 or more hours of sleep, and persistent exhaustion throughout the day. Many people take years to realize that the underlying cause of these symptoms is that they stop breathing dozen times or more a night.
When a patient has sleep apnea, their breathing becomes shallow and sometimes stops altogether. This jolts the body out of deep sleep, but patients don’t recall this happening. Instead, they simply go through life feeling lethargic and tired, lacking the ability to concentrate and the stamina to be as active as they’d like.
The Dental Implant Center of Rockville can diagnose and treat sleep apnea. Advances in diagnostic technology allow us to use a scanner to create a soft tissue model of your mouth and airway to diagnose sleep apnea. We further mail you a devise to measure your oxygen as well as the number of times that you stop breathing at night. With the above two we now are able to catagorize your sleep apnea as mild, moderate or severe. This helps us determine the most effective course of treatment. Possible sleep apnea solutions include:
- Oral Appliance Therapy (OAT), a non-invasive option that is our first line of treatment in most cases. These removable appliances adjust the position of the lower jaw and tongue, minimizing airway obstruction. In addition to treating sleep apnea, oral appliance therapy can be used for snoring.
- Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machine, which blows air into your throat through a mask. This keeps your airway open and unobstructed while you sleep. CPAP machines are commonly used for moderate to severe sleep apnea, or when OAT has proven ineffective.
- Surgical Treatment is used when other options have failed. The type of surgery needed depends on your anatomy and the cause of your sleep apnea, but may involve shrinking, stiffening, or removing excess tissue in the throat and palate in order to widen the breathing passages.
Most sufferers of sleep apnea snore, but not all snorers have sleep apnea. Like sleep apnea, snoring is also caused by a narrowing or blocked airway. This causes the soft palate and throat tissue to vibrate, creating the snoring sound. The most common causes of snoring include:
- Inflammation of the tonsils or other tissues in the mouth, nose, or throat
- Colds and allergies, which can both cause blocked nasal passages
- Lack of muscle tone
- Obesity
- Certain medications
No matter what the cause of your snoring, oral appliance therapy is an effective solution.
Call 301-294-8700 to schedule an appointment.