There is not a single peer reviewed published study that shows sleep apnea as fully curable. For radical surgery, that’s irreversible , there is the tracheotomy, but even then, quality of life and issues related to that surgery are quite notable.
When considering CPAP machines or PAP therapy, patients are dependent upon that treatment for the rest of their lives. The compliance and adherence to those machines, however, is extremely poor. Customized oral appliance therapy in dental sleep medicine also make patients dependent upon this treatment option, but compliance and comfort is way, way better than PAP therapy. That notion is also backed by evidence based studies.
When looking at airway growth appliances, where there’s bone remodeling and/or growth coupled with myofunctional therapy, etc, the evidence base – verdict is still out. Although many case studies and feasibility studies show promising and successful results, there is still lack of meta analyses and/or randomized controlled studies. However, many organizations and groups are coming up with strong data to support this option in sleep medicine.
Inspire and other surgical options such as maxillary mandibular advancement (MMA), etc. are invasive and they don’t guarantee any result with sleep apnea treatment. Moreover, there are several “qualifiers” that need to be met for Inspire surgery, such as no concentric airway collapse on apnea patients. The way to screen that would be to use DICE under general anesthesia to see how the patient’s airway collapses.
