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I have been diagnosed with Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnoea and the consultant and his team supplied me with a CPAP machine. I had no problems with the physical presence of the mask but was frequently woken with a horrendous dry mouth or "surges" of air in the mask and my face. The sleep team were extremely good and offered lots of advice and tried various masks and machines but even with the humidifier set at maximum I still experienced the horrendous dry mouth. Once awake I was unable to get back to sleep wearing the mask so ended up taking it off to be able to get sufficient sleep which unfortunately didn't give me the full therapeutic value. As I was losing more sleep than I was gaining it was agreed that the CPAP machine was not for me and I was discharged from the hospital. The consultant suggested looking into mandibular mouthguards but said the NHS did not supply them.
I have spoken to my dentist about mandibular mouthguards and she said it would cost £750. Before spending this money I would like to know if anyone else has used them and how efficient they are in helping with sleep apnoea. I would be glad of anyone's comments please.
Views: 114
Sorry to hear this as it's quite a worry that you no longer have CPAP with your sleep apnoea being severe Christine, as you'll no doubt know the health risks of living with untreated sleep apnoea https://www.hope2sleep.co.uk/sleep-apnoea-information.html I just wish you'd found us when you were struggling with your CPAP so that we could have helped. Dry mouth is usually very easy to treat with a CPAP humidifier and very often things like the XyliMelts. In fact if you check out this webinar replay, my own talk is all about dry mouth as if you go with a mandibular device, dry mouth is a common problem with those too.
£750 for a mandibular device isn't expensive, but it's rare they treat severe ranges of sleep apnoea, although they can help improve the sleep apnoea and maybe take it into the moderate range. If you do go with a mandibular device we always recommend a repeat sleep study to see if the device is actually helping. If the hospital have discharged you then we do have a sleep study service at the charity on this link https://www.hope2sleep.co.uk/sleep-apnoea-home-screening-service.html
If you have a Facebook account we do have a Private Group there, where you're likely to get more responses from people who use or have tried mandibular devices so here's the link to join https://www.facebook.com/groups/SleepApnoeaSupportAndAwareness
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