Combination Therapy

Treatment for obstructive sleep apnea can involve:

• Oral appliance therapy
• CPAP therapy
• Surgery

Sometimes, a single treatment is sufficient. For some patients, we may need to combine treatment therapies to achieve a desired therapeutic result. Often times, with a patient who has severe sleep apnea, the air pressure for their CPAP may be set very high to maintain a patent airway for them to breath at night. This high pressure may be difficult if not impossible for some patients to tolerate.

By combining the use of an oral appliance therapy with CPAP therapy, you should be able to reduce the pressure on your CPAP machine. Just the simple fact that you are using an oral appliance decreases resistance for airflow. When you are sleeping, you would only need to use lower pressure when you combine CPAP with oral appliance therapy.

Finally, there is another technique to make your sleep apnea treatment more comfortable. If you are having a hard time with the harness or the mask, we offer combination therapy. This involves using the oral appliance as a mechanism of directly attaching to the hose of your CPAP. A comfortable nasal pillow is stably connected to your oral appliance. Hence there is no uncomfortable head strap to keep the mask to your face. So, with the reduced pressure from CPAP and the lack of headgear, patient usage is improved and patient satisfaction increases.