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.

Snoring and Surgery Is Often a Bad Combo

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.

Surgery Is Exploratory!

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. 

Snoring Surgery is not Always Successful

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.

The example on the following page will help shed some light on this potentially complex point.