Oral Appliance Adjustments Helpful for Sleep Apnea

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Oral Appliance Adjustments Helpful for Sleep Apnea

Thursday, June 3, 2004

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Some people who experience episodes of blocked

breathing during sleep -- a condition called sleep apnea -- can be helped

with

an oral device that holds their jaw in a forward position and their airway

open. Now a French group reports a refinement of this strategy.

They say using the oral device to progressively increase the advancement of

the jaw can achieve optimal results in many patients with sleep apnea who

cannot tolerate other types of treatment.

One such therapy is nasal continuous positive airway pressure (nCPAP). It is

a highly efficacious treatment for the condition, but, as Dr. Bernard Fleury

of Hopital Saint Antoine, Paris, told Reuters Health, " effectiveness is

limited

by compliance. "

An oral appliance promoting advancement of the mandible may provide an

alternative to nCPAP, he added, but the optimum degree of advancement must

be found

for the best results.

To assess this approach, Fleury and his colleagues studied 40 people with

moderate-to-severe sleep apnea who were unable to tolerate long-term nCPAP.

As

described in the medical journal Chest, the subjects were fitted with an

acrylic

appliance that could be attached to dental arches.

Using the device, the researchers advanced the jaw by 1 millimeter every

week

until symptoms such as excessive daytime sleepiness resolved, and there was

a

reduction in the number of episodes of low oxygen during sleep.

Altogether, Flury concluded, the appliance with the appropriate adjustments

" achieved a complete response in 64 percent of these patients who had

abandoned

nCPAP therapy. "

SOURCE: Chest, May 2004.

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http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_18149.html