depends on what surgery you are speaking about
trach surgery is the better than cpap
cpap is the gold standard
trach surgery can be reversed
other surgery may i say may help and even if it did the effects last mayby several year and usually comes back with a vengence
Gary, we've had a lot of discussion about this and I think the concensus is your milage may vary. In the hands of an expert diagnostician (ENT) or Oral Surgeon results can be very good. Hopefully those with first hand knowledge will answer. Some people have problems that may be helped with surgery and some may not. Hence a very good doctor is needed. Just go to the top of this page, view discussions and click on all discussions, then do your search.
If you go to your (my) page and all discussions and do a search on surgery you will come up with about 60 discussions. Some of that info might help while you wait for someone to answer here.
I understand that an accepted figure is that about 40% of UPPP surgeries are "successful", with "successful" is a 50% reduction of AHI. "Success" has nothing to do with whether the patient can stop using CPAP or not. These "success" numbers are pretty dismal considering that you need to reduce to AHI to below 5 in order to be "cured". Another problem is that the effects of surgeries are usually temporary; the "cure" usually only lasts a few years.
I think that when a surgeon says that an OSA patient is "a perfect candidate" for surgery, that means that the patient's insurance will cover it.
If an ENT in the beginning of my treatment told me that I was a good candidate for surgery, I would run away very quickly.
I agree that the first choice for sleep apnea is CPAP (or maybe an oral appliance).
If subsequently proves difficulties to tolerate the use of CPAP, I can see the possibility of surgeries. A large number of "mainstream" surgeries can really give a much better CPAP compliance. This applies especially surgeries in the nose.
Any surgery that helps to CPAP compliance is worth considering in this case.
If this does not help, I would spend very much time trying to find the right ENT (like Dr. Park). This is really a matter of trust.
Only very few are cured by surgery, and it is based typically on a good ENT and a good patient selection. And there is never a guarantee for the success rate
i had surgery [uppp] in 2006 and i guess i did o.k. for a couple of years, although no sleep study was done after my surgery, i'll have to think i did. in 2009 my apnea was back in full force---worse than ever!!! i went from mild apnea to severe!!!!
i am back on the c-pap.