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Stitching technique could stop chronic snoring
Author: Jonathan Warren
Snoring can be an annoying problem - usually more for your partner than yourself - but would you go as far as to get surgery to stop it? Doctors in New York are trialling a new technique that involves using surgical thread to effectively "anchor" the tongue to the base of the mouth so it cannot fall back during sleep, which causes snoring.
The thread has tiny plastic cones threaded along it that dissolve in the tongue after three months, but trigger tissue growth that prevents the tongue from moving out of place permanently. Early trials of the technique have seen success with five patients so far, and doctors believe it could form a solution to the problem of sleep apnoea - albeit a drastic one.
"The purpose of surgery is to eliminate the need for a continuous positive airway pressure device," the Daily Mail reports the researchers as saying. "People who undergo this procedure will have a significant drop in the rate of breathing pauses at night." Sleep apnoea contributes to a less restful night in bed, but if left untreated it has been linked to more serious conditions like hypertension, depression, coronary disease and strokes.
