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Somnoplasty Offers Hope for Overcoming the Snoring Habit
 Snoring, by itself, is not a major health threat, but an individual's snoring habit may be a source of friction and frustration for his or her bedpartner and perhaps even other family members or friends. The Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery at MCV Hospitals is now offering a new, minimally invasive treatment to reduce snoring.
Snoring occurs when redundant tissue in a patient's airway relaxes during sleep and vibrates with breathing. In most cases, the offending tissue is an enlarged soft palate and uvula at the back of the mouth. Until recently, the most common way to reduce snoring was to shorten the soft palate either surgically under anesthesia or with a laser as an office procedure, both of which often resulted in a painful recovery and carried a slight risk of bleeding. Now a new treatment, called Somnoplasty, uses precisely targeted, low-heat radiofrequency energy to stiffen and shorten the palate with less pain and bleeding risk than with previous techniques. With the patient awake under local anesthesia, the surgeon uses a handheld device to focus the radiofrequency energy on a specific area beneath the mucosa, or outer tissue layer, of the soft palate. This produces a controlled, localized area of tissue injury surrounding the treatment area. Over the next 6 to 12 weeks, the injured tissue is absorbed naturally by the body and replaced by scar tissue, thus tightening and shrinking the treated tissue. As this occurs, the reduced amount of tissue in the airway helps lessen the sounds of snoring. Unlike the traditional or laser surgery procedures, which create a raw surface in the back of the mouth that takes time to heal, this procedure keeps the outer tissue layer intact and only treats the internal tissue layers, causing potentially less pain and with less risk of bleeding.
 The Somnoplasty device and procedure were developed by the Somnus Medical Company, and has been cleared by the FDA for the treatment of habitual snoring. Somnoplasty is an elective procedure (not covered by insurance) and may be repeated if necessary. Most patients will have adequate relief of snoring with one or two treatments. As this is a relatively new technology, longterm studies have not been done, and the exact duration of the benefit is still unknown.
MCVH is one of only about 35 academic medical centers nationwide eligible to offer this treatment and is one of the first hospitals in Central Virginia to make it available.
For more information about Somnoplasty, call the Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery at (804) 628-4368
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