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SNORING, WHY SURGERY CAN BE A BAD IDEA
One of the nicest things about living in the 21st century is the amount of surgical options available to more people, including more and more people
in the developing world (though, obviously, not enough).
Quite sincerely, countless numbers of lives have been outright saved, or inestimably improved, due to surgery. I doubt you’d find anyone who would
absolutely conclude that surgery, as a concept, is a mistake; or that we should long for pre-surgery days, where infections and ailments so easily
morphed into life-threatening conditions.
Are We Addicted to surgery?
Yet (and yes, there’s always a yet!), there is a bit of a cloud attached to this surgical silver lining. We now live in a world that is, for all
intents and purposes, addicted to surgery. It has become the first option – and in some cases, the only option – that both doctors and patients
consider when trying to remedy a problem.
Advances in medical technology have played a role here as well; transforming within the span of a generation a surgery that once required 7-10 days
of hospital care, to an “in by 2:00pm, out by 4:00pm” outpatient experience; and since many (enhanced) medical insurance plans cover many types of
surgery – all it needs is a doctor’s okay – it’s not uncommon to come across people who have had a litany of surgeries over the past few years.
They might even know the surgeons by name, and have a favorite parking spot at the hospital.
It is in light of all this is that we look at snoring, and at surgery. In a nutshell: the two don’t mix; and this is a bit of a problem to people
who are persuaded by medical doctors (or by surgery-addicted colleagues, friends, and relatives) to go under the knife to get rid of that “pesky
snoring problem”. These people may be well intentioned, but they don’t have all of the facts. One of the things that they probably don’t (yet) know
– again, not deliberately – is that surgery is not an exact science. It may look that way, especially when one sees the army of hi-tech equipment
that clogs many operating rooms and makes one think that they’re at NASA Mission Control instead of a local hospital.
However – and even surgeons will readily admit this (or their insurance companies will if they won’t) – surgery is, always has been, and always will
be, somewhat exploratory. True, some surgeries are better known and more ordinary than others, and the chance of a successful outcome for, say, a
quick knee surgery might be radically more predictable than a kidney transplant. But the bottom line is that both of these procedures are surgical,
which means that they both have risks. This, indeed, is something of a wake-up call for people who have equated surgery with certainty.
So how does this relate to snoring? Quite bluntly, it’s this: whereas some surgeries are a bit more tried and tested than others, surgery designed
to stop, mitigate, or treat snoring have been less than successful for many people. Why is this the case? Surgery to treat snoring is designed,
ultimately, to increase the airflow in the trachea; and the most common surgical way to do this is to cut away some of the tissue that is clogging
up that passageway. Is this a wise choice? Possibly, yes, for some snorers this can be a remedy; but not for all, and certainly not for most.
This is because the problem of snoring is often much deeper than a constricted trachea.
Yes, as we discussed earlier in this book that is how snoring manifests itself as sound: air from the lungs vibrates in the airflow. Yet for many
people, this is not the ultimate cause of snoring; that cause, like many medical ailments, is often something of a mystery, and can change
significantly from person to person.
Let’s look at something simple and non-medical: car insurance. Let’s take 20 people who are considered bad drivers by their insurance companies.
As a result of that dubious distinction, all of these drivers are going to face a premium increase of $500 when they’re insurance is renewed.
Now, seen at a distance, it might appear as though all of these drivers are in the same boat (or same car, as it were). And given that assumption,
a method to deal with this problem might be to simply give each of these people an extra $500 in cash. Really, as strange as that sounds, this is
a way to solve this problem for each of these 20 drivers: they need to find $500 more
to pay their insurance premium, and hence, that is what this
so-called solution is going to do. Yet is this wise? No!
Some of those drivers – probably more than a few of them – are not going to actually correct why they might be classified as a “bad driver” by
their insurance company. They simply won’t know why they’re bad drivers, and hence, some of them will likely remain a “bad driver”, and face
higher insurance premiums next year – but this time after a few more accidents or tickets.
As you can easily see, the real cause of the so-called “bad driving” isn’t solved when each person is given a nice gift of $500 with which to pay
his or her increased insurance premium. And since the problem isn’t really solved, the bad driving can crop up again, and cause financial problems
and even worse, it can endanger health and safety.
So when people readily turn to trachea tissue-cutting surgery to cure their snoring, they may quite easily be overlooking the real root cause of
the snoring; something that may be related to diet, sleep position, jaw or tongue dysfunction, lifestyle, genetics, or be an indication of an even
more serious health problem; an indication that could be dangerously suppressed (temporarily, at least), after a seemingly successful surgery.
Going to surgery as an easy, off-the cuff solution for snoring, is like giving these bad drivers $500 in cash. It may seem to solve their problem,
but for many, it will just be a temporary fix; masking even deeper problems that can lead to severe consequences down the road, including Sleep
apnea.
Again, we return to the unfortunately familiar theme that surgery has become an easy first option for many physicians who, for a variety of reasons
(including, sometimes, financial ones) find themselves recommending surgery as an almost off the cuff solution to a serious snoring problem.
Sometimes, what is lost in this snoring surgical-obsession are some very basic and established risks. For those who are not immediately familiar
with such risks, they include:
·post-operative medical conditions, including aesthetic and cosmetic concerns
·infection from hospitals (including the emerging antibiotic-resistant “superbugs”
·scarring of tissues that can lead to painful inflammation
·expensive follow-up to surgery
·time consuming follow-up which may cause extended periods of leave from work (potentially adding to the overall cost of the salary in lost
wages/salary)
·expensive medications to control swelling
·possible damage to speech, including changing voice
·possible problems with swallowing
·possible hemorrhaging
·possible uncomfortable and distracting dry mouth
·possible intense ear pain
It’s necessary and well-worth repeating (sorry, but it is…) that, overall, surgery is often a truly wondrous means of solving, or at least
alleviating, some serious health problems. Nobody wants to return to a pre-surgical world, where procedures that are swiftly addressed today would
otherwise render a sufferer in agony for years; or perhaps even hasten an early death.
So it should not be surmised that the view is that surgery is inherently bad; because it’s not. But surgery is simply a tool, and one that should
be used only when necessary (not unlike any other tool). The problem is that some people rely on surgery as an automatic fix. What’s that old
saying: if all you have is a hammer in your hand, then everything looks like a nail? For some people, this is regrettably true when it comes to
surgery; every health ailment that they see is worthy of surgery.
Yet these same people would probably seriously reconsider their views when faced with the substantiated evidence that surgery is not often working
for snorers (and their loved ones).
Overall, then, while snoring surgery can be useful and effective for some sufferers (and their families, roommates, neighbors, heck, even their
pets!), it’s clear that surgery has not proven to a panacea, offering risk-free cures for this dangerous, and potentially life-affecting condition.
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Emanuele Allenti is the owner of the stop snoring website. You can freely republish this article on your website, newsletter etc.
given you don't modify it and leave this resource box untouched.
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