Have you recently been diagnosed with sleep apnea? Dr. Barotz offers a range of today’s best solutions to help patients just like you rest better at night. Based on the results of your sleep study, and with your medical history in mind, he will gladly work with you on a treatment plan built just for you.

Below you’ll find helpful information about the solutions we offer. If you have questions about any of them, or you’d like to reserve a consultation with Dr. Barotz, simply call our Denver office. Our front office team is always happy to hear from new or returning patients.

CPAP

For many years, CPAP has been the standard solution for helping patients with OSA treat their condition. CPAP stands for continuous positive airway pressure. During sleep, the CPAP machine pumps a steady stream of air through a special mask worn over the patient’s face. This steady stream of air keeps the patient’s windpipe open all night so she can rest more soundly.

But as effective as treatment with CPAP can be, it’s not without its drawbacks. Some CPAP patients have trouble sleeping because of the sound produced by the CPAP machine. Other problems associated with CPAP include:

• Nasal congestion
• Headaches
• Ear pressure
• Claustrophobia
• Discomfort

Not every patient undergoing treatment with CPAP will experience these side effects, but those who do should alert Dr. Barotz so an alternate solution may be tried.

Oral Appliance Therapy

Oral appliance therapy is currently the most popular alternative to treatment with CPAP. In fact, it’s a superior solution, in some ways, because of its simplicity. Instead of using a mask and a stream of air, it uses nothing more complicated than a simple, custom-made orthodontic mouthpiece. As you sleep, your appliance will keep your windpipe open by repositioning your tongue or lower jaw. As a result, you can enjoy a better night’s rest.

Oral appliance therapy isn’t just used for treating sleep apnea, though. It’s also an excellent solution for patients who snore. Because the cause is very much the same, keeping the tongue and/or lower jaw out of the way will also prevent the tissue vibrations that are responsible for that annoying sound we’re all so familiar with.

If you’d like to learn more oral appliance therapy could help you, contact our Denver office to schedule your consultation with Dr. Barotz. We would be happy to answer your questions and discuss whether it’s truly the right solution for you.

SomnoMed with Compliance Recorder

SomnoMed is one of the leading providers of oral appliances for sleep apnea and bruxism. As a provider of SomnoMed oral appliances, Dr. Barotz can help patients see superior results. But SomnoMed doesn’t just produce better appliances than others; they’re also leading oral appliance therapy into the 21^st century by incorporating compliance recorders into their appliances. A compliance recorder is a special chip that can monitor how long the appliance was worn and the position of the patient’s head. This information can then be uploaded to a HIPPA-secure database for Dr. Barotz to access.

This form of treated is excellent for patients who are intolerant to treatment with CPAP. If you’d like to learn more about how treatment with SomnoMed differs from treatment with traditional oral appliance therapy, don’t hesitate to contact our Denver office. Our team would be happy to schedule a time for you to visit Dr. Barotz.

Sleep Apnea Surgery

As effective as CPAP and oral appliance therapy may be for many patients, there are still some who will need to pursue an entirely different solution—surgery. If you’d like to consider surgery to treat your sleep apnea, Dr. Barotz would be happy to work with you on a personalized plan that targets one or two very specific areas. Because most forms of OSA are caused by obstruction in the upper respiratory tract, most of the surgical procedures Mile High Sleep Center offers are designed to address problems with the nose, tongue, or throat.

The most common surgical procedures for sleep apnea include:

• Nasal Surgery
• Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP)
• The Pillar Procedure
• Hyoid Advancement
• Tongue Advancement
• Tongue Base Reduction
• Lower Jaw Advancement
• Tracheostomy

During a consultation at our Denver office, Dr. Barotz will help you determine which of these solutions is most right for you. If you have questions about the plan we recommend, don’t hesitate to voice them. We want every patient we see to leave feeling one hundred-percent confident in the plan we’ve recommended to them.