Sleep Apnea Diagnosis and Treatment in Louisville, KY

A New Treatment for Sleep Apnea Healthtalks Transcript:

Juhee Mian, MD, Sleep Medicine
Baptist Health Louisville 

Juhee Mian, MD: Sleep apnea is a condition where a patient stops breathing more often than they should during their sleep. If you're noticing snoring, concerns for stopping breathing, and your sleep just isn't restorative or isn't refreshing, that would be a reason to get checked out for sleep apnea. In terms of treatment for sleep apnea, the gold standard is still a CPAP machine. One more option [is] Inspire® therapy, which is newer and for patients with more moderate-to-severe sleep apnea who cannot tolerate a CPAP machine. Inspire therapy is essentially a nerve stimulator that is implanted in the chest wall of a patient through an outpatient procedure with only two incisions. The entire point of this device is that when the patient is sleeping, the device will stimulate the nerve, which controls the movement of the tongue. Therefore, during sleep the tongue will move forward in the patient's mouth as opposed to backward, shutting the airway. In terms of the effectiveness of Inspire, the data is robust and it shows dramatic improvements in the events of stopping breathing, as well as improvements in how the patient feels the next day in terms of how well rested they feel. Seeing a patient walk in after being treated for sleep apnea, I see them improving how they do at work. I see [their] relationships improving. I see them functioning well in their communities. It's just a great feeling to be able to be a part of that.