Case Study: Laser Treatment For Snoring
This patient came in for a laser treatment to reduce his snoring. He didn’t realize his airway was almost completely closed. In a single visit, we opened up his airway!
Blocked airways are the cause of sleep apnea and they greatly contribute to snoring.
Moonlight Beach Dental Encinitas offers you effective laser and device treatments to open your airways.
Moonlight Beach Dental offers treatments that can help reduce and even eliminate snoring.
These things aren’t fun, comfortable, or fashionable.
What you may not know is that there are alternatives to the CPAP.
Look at this poor guy. The CPAP makes him look like the space jockey from Alien.
A laser treatment called NightLase can open airways almost instantly. This is a completely pain-free procedure (really), and it has with a extremely high success rate at lessening the effects of snoring and apnea.
Additionally, cutting-edge nighttime sleep devices can further help open airways.
One laser treatment to open an airway takes only about 20 minutes.
No sedatives or pain medication are necessary. The procedure feels similar to drinking a warm tea.
The laser warms the tissue and stimulates new collagen synthesis (neocollagenesis), which causes tightening and contraction of the tissue.
This results in a near-instant opening the airway, and easier breathing.
Photo: The top photo shows this patient’s airway was almost completely blocked. The bottom photo is same patient immediately after a 20 minute, painless laser procedure. Read more about this case.
Worn at night, the basic idea behind the SomnoDent device is that moves the lower jaw slightly forward, which also moves those obstructive tissues forward – keeping the airway open.
You can try this yourself: Move your lower jaw forward and try to snore. Most people find this hard (if not impossible) to do.
These are devices are custom-fit to your teeth, and sized using 3D scanning right here at Moonlight Beach Dental.
Worn at night, the basic idea behind the SomnoDent device is that moves the lower jaw slightly forward, which also moves those obstructive tissues forward – keeping the airway open.
You can try this yourself: Move your lower jaw forward and try to snore. Most people find this hard (if not impossible) to do.
These are devices are custom-fit to your teeth, and sized using 3D scanning right here at Moonlight Beach Dental.
This patient came in for a laser treatment to reduce his snoring. He didn’t realize his airway was almost completely closed. In a single visit, we opened up his airway!
Did you know Moonlight Beach Dental can help eliminate snoring issues – in a painless way?
Nightlase is a laser treatment of benefit to people that do not feel rested (even when wearing a CPAP machine), and it can even eliminate snoring.
Obstructive sleep apnea if the partial or complete obstruction of the u[[er airway. It is characterized by repetitive episodes of shallow or paused breathing during sleep, despite the effort to breathe, and is usually associated with a reduction in blood oxygen saturation.
Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when your breathing regularly stops or is slowed for 10 seconds or longer due to blocked or narrowed airways. Airway blockage may be caused by excess tissue in the throat or nasal passages, large tonsils, a large tongue, and sometimes the structure of the jaw itself. Being constantly awoken during sleep robs your body of the rest it needs to function properly during the day. OSA is classified as mild, moderate or severe, depending on the number of stops (apnea) or slow breathing (hypopnea) per hour.
To be diagnosed, a sleep study either at home or in a sleep center must be conducted or interpreted by a sleep physician. Once a sleep study is completed, a trained dentist can help decide if a mandibular advancement appliance can be made instead of the CPAP machine.
If you feel snoring is a problem, you may be a suitable candidate for a snoring appliance (oral airway dilator) which is on of the most efficient and effective methods for treating primary snoring. Snoring appliances (which are made and fitted by Dr. Vane) work by moving your jaw and tongue forward, thereby creating more space for you to properly breathe during the night.
Snoring is from a narrowing of the airways (nose, mouth or throat). Snoring is often an indicator of sleep apnea, as the narrowing of the airways can be something more serious. A sleep study is where a medical recording device is used to record involuntary body functions that occur during sleep.
For OSA, a sleep study needs to record the following:
If snoring is still a problem, Dr. Vane can perform a procedure with a laser called NightLase.
This painless procedure, which involves 3-4 sessions of 30 min each, involves using the laser to shrink the tissue in the back of the throat by increasing collagen formation.
The tightening of the tissue allows the throat and airway to open, dramatically reducing snoring and increasing airflow.