Surgery often comes with pain during the healing process, and recovery from soft palate surgery for obstructive sleep apnea, in particular, is painful. There is wide variation in approaches taken to pain management after soft palate surgery, and I was fortunate to be involved in a 2019 publication from an international group presenting consensus-based recommendations…
Mouth taping is one of many approaches marketed aggressively for snoring and obstructive sleep apnea without careful scientific evaluation. There is some evidence that mouth breathing can be associated with increased overall airway resistance and narrowing, both of which are unfavorable. The more-important question is whether closure of the mouth – possibly with mouth taping…
Mentoring and training the next generation of leaders in the field is one of the great joys of my career. I have been fortunate to train numerous sleep surgeons who are achieving tremendous things and already surpassing what I have accomplished in my career. In 2017, I wrote about a sleep surgery fellowship program that…
Yesterday, the New York Times podcast “The Daily” focused on tongue tie surgery in children with “The Booming Business of Cutting Babies’ Tongues”. The podcast pointed to the explosive growth in aggressive tongue tie surgery for children. Simple snipping of tissue under the tongue has been done for centuries, with proven benefits for some children…
On February 16-17, 2024, we will hold the 29th annual Advances in Diagnosis and Treatment of Sleep Apnea and Snoring course. We are delighted to have an outstanding faculty to speak on what we feel are interesting and provocative topics. As I do every year, I will share what I feel are some of the… Read more »Is mouth taping helpful for patients with obstructive sleep apnea?
Sleep Surgery Fellowship at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine
Maybe I am not the only one concerned about tongue tie surgery and myofunctional therapy for sleep apnea
Will there be a new era of (sleep apnea and snoring) medical education conferences?
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Predicting oral appliance outcomes in sleep apnea with drug-induced sleep endoscopy
Obstructive sleep apnea and snoring are common, but it is naive (and incorrect) to think that any single approach is going to work for all patients. This is true for CPAP and is clearly true for surgical procedures and oral appliances. I have written previously on working with sleep dentists to evaluate whether a certain… Read more »
Can we stop publishing “systematic reviews” of myofunctional therapy for obstructive sleep apnea?
UPDATE: a version of this has been accepted for publication as a letter to the editor in the medical journal Laryngoscope. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are supposed to be high-quality reviews of the medical literature that represent the highest level of scientific evaluation and evidence. Unfortunately, all that glitters in not gold. I have written… Read more »
UCLA: My New Career Adventure
I am excited to announce that I have now started a new adventure in my career, joining the UCLA Department of Head and Neck Surgery. I have been fortunate to train and then work at outstanding places with such talented people. This move will be no different, as the UCLA team has consistently been one… Read more »
Body Mass Index and Inspire Upper Airway Stimulation
Earlier this month, the US Food and Drug Administration expanded the approved indications for the Inspire Upper Airway Stimulation system, raising the upper limit for body mass index from 32 to 40 kg/m2 and increasing the upper limit for the apnea hypopnea index to 100 events/hour. This has been met with some surprise by colleagues,… Read more »
LivaNova THN/Aura6000 Stimulation Has Variable Tongue Movements That Are Associated with Outcomes
Hypoglossal nerve stimulation is an important treatment option for patients with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea who cannot tolerate positive airway pressure therapy (for example, CPAP). The only currently-FDA-approved technology is Upper Airway Stimulation (Inspire Medical Systems, Golden Valley, MN), but multiple technologies are in human clinical trials or under development. One of these… Read more »
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