Boise Dentist Blog
The professional blog of Doctors Dan Bruce, Steve Bruce, Rosa Pothier and Rob Ririe
How snoring and sleep apnea affects bed partners
A recent article in Sleep and Breathing studied "the hypothesis that obstructive sleep apnea/hyponea syndrome and snoring affect not only the patients but also their bed partners." The study used 3 tests to determine depression, anxiety and sleepiness in bedpartners of patients with snoring and obstructive sleep apnea. The tests where taken preoperatively and then again after radio-frequency tissue ablation (removal of excessive tissue in the throat). This procedure decreased the severity of obstructive sleep apnea/hypopnea, but not by very much. The important finding in this study was that depression scores significantly decreased, which suggests that snoring does have an affect on quality of life of bedpartners. Of course, if you happen to be a bedpartner of someone who snores, this probably does not come as a surprise at all!
Another finding I found to be interesting was that the radio-frequency tissue ablation treatment only improved obstructive sleep apnea scores by about 20%. CPAP and oral appliance therapy both show better results.