Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) occurs when your muscles relax during sleep, allowing soft tissue to collapse and block your airway. This can cause you to stop breathing for anywhere from a few seconds to almost a minute at a time. These breathing pauses are followed by brief awakenings that disturb your sleep - even if you don't realize it!
Symptoms of OSA
Symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea include loud or frequent snoring or silent pauses in breathing and choking or gasping sounds. Other common symptoms include:
- Waking in the morning feeling unrefreshed
- Being tired during the day
- Morning headaches
- Waking up frequently at night to go to the bathroom
- Difficulty concentrating or remembering things
How is OSA Diagnosed?
Obstructive sleep apnea must be diagnosed by a doctor, so you should ask your primary care doctor for a sleep evaluation. Your primary care doctor may provide a diagnosis or may refer you to a doctor who specializes in treating sleep problems. To find out if you have OSA, your doctor or the sleep specialist will complete a sleep evaluation. This may involve either an overnight sleep test at a sleep center or a home sleep apnea test (HSAT). A sleep specialist will interpret the data from your sleep test. The information from the evaluation and the sleep test results will be used to determine if you have OSA. Here at First Street Smiles we are partnered with Sleep Impressions, a medical practice that is able to provide at home sleep studies all paid for by your medical insurance.
How is OSA Treated?
If you are diagnosed with OSA, your doctor will discuss treatment options with you. OSA treatments include continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy, oral appliance therapy (OAT), or surgery. CPAP therapy is a very common treatment for OSA, but OAT is also an effective treatment option. If you and your doctor decide that OAT is the best treatment option for you, your doctor will write you a prescription for a custom-made oral appliance. Sleep Impressions allows the flexibility to schedule telehealth visits with the sleep doctor, who will discuss the results of your sleep study and provide a prescription for oral appliance therapy.
Dr. Nneka Obi is trained to provide OAT and can make a custom-fitted oral appliance using the Eccovision, digital impressions and models of your mouth. Patients enjoy it because it's comfortable, easy to wear, quiet, portable, convenient for travel and easy to clean. The Eccovision is a device used to help provide more precise and accurate measurements in terms of the optimal and most therapeutic measurements needed for your airway. This device uses a pharyngometer and a rhinometer to properly assess your airway and nasal passageways.
