About 25% of people snore at night. Men are more often affected. Special diagnostics are required to determine the severity of the illness. We differentiate between two types of snoring.

• Primary, socially disruptive snoring: this is audible snoring, ranging from barely noticeable to very loud, but is not defined as an illness according to health insurance law.
• In contrast, snoring with pauses in breathing and oxygen desaturation is dangerous for the person concerned in several respects. Without a secure oxygen supply, a healthy life is not possible. Continuous oxygen deficits, so-called hypoxia, lead to increased release of the stress hormone adrenaline. This in turn leads to an increase in blood pressure in the long term. In the presence of adrenaline, the heart is literally whipped up and forced to work harder, while at the same time the oxygen supply to the heart is reduced. This leads not only to an increase in heart rate and even to palpitations, but also to an increased risk of cardiac arrhythmia. Typical consequences are, for example, a heart attack or a stroke.
  A permanent and nightly recurring lack of oxygen supply to the brain also leads to measurable changes and permanently affects brain functions.
  The diagnosis of snoring and obstructive sleep apnoea plays a decisive role in the diagnosis of burn-out, listlessness, lack of drive and performance. The triggering factors are numerous. Some of them can be influenced by the patient, such as a frequently increased body weight or the consumption of alcohol and nicotine.
• On the other hand, individual anatomical peculiarities, such as the ratio between the upper and lower jaw, the patency of the nasal passages and the size of the lymphatic tissues in the palate and tongue region, cannot be changed by any individual lifestyle measures. You need a surgical procedure!

What actually happens when you snore? During inhalation, lower muscle tone triggers a vibration of the soft tissues of the upper respiratory tract, which narrows the airway cross-section by suction. The flow rate of the incoming air increases, which leads to turbulence, which in turn increases the vibration. This can lead to a complete closure of the airways with breathing interruptions lasting up to several minutes. Affected persons and their sleeping partners usually do not notice this at all while asleep! In fact, after a professional evaluation of their measurements, many affected persons are surprised by the results.

Did you know that a variety of health problems are directly caused by pathological snoring?
These include, among others, cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke and disturbance of metabolic functions. However, psychological changes such as depression and burn-out, as well as disorders of the sexual function can also occur.
Nights spent snoring lead to daytime fatigue and have been shown to reduce the ability to concentrate.
Tiredness and inattentiveness are often the causes of accidents involving machines, as well as a high percentage of traffic accidents, leading not only to personal but also third-party damage. This exposes you to the risk of a possible rejection of claims by your insurance company.
Pupils and students who suffer from obstructive sleep apnoea can achieve an increase in success in learning and the required exams through treatment.

Most of the patients who inform themselves in this section have already received a C-PAP mask supply (so-called sleep breathing mask). This is a form of positive pressure ventilation that keeps the airways open and prevents the soft tissues of the airways from collapsing. In many cases, however, the snoring mask is not tolerated because the overpressure is perceived as unpleasant or air blows out of the side of the mask, irritating the eye. Drying of the nose and/or eye are frequently described complaints.
The greatest danger is when the need for a C-PAP fitting has already been determined and the patient does not use the snore mask at all or only for a few hours at night for various reasons.
In these patients, it has already been determined by the preliminary examinations by a specialist that it is indeed a case of dangerous snoring. In this case, the possibly adequate therapy of nocturnal positive pressure ventilation is not effective, especially since the patient does not use the snoring mask or uses it insufficiently.
The patient and his or her social environment are lulled into the deceptive belief that the issue has been resolved by the provision of a C-PAP device. The patient decides to use the prescribed device for a shorter period of time or not to use it at all - but this would be tantamount to suspending therapy.
The dangerous oxygen deficits and their sometimes dramatic consequences are thus still present and unhindered unfold their dangerous potential of recurring hypoxia. This is where we come in and develop individual solutions with you!

Children, especially in their early years around the age of 3, develop an enlargement of the lymphatic tissue due to the maturation of their immune system. The lymphatic tissue is often so large that, in addition to obstructing the airways, the eustachian tube can no longer fulfil its function of ventilating the middle ear. This leads to accumulation of secretions in the middle ear and conductive hearing loss. Often these children turn up the TV or music players much louder, speak slurred and indistinctly and even regress linguistically. At night, they sometimes snore louder than "daddy" and can sometimes have relatively long pauses in breathing. Because of their smaller blood volume, children also have a smaller proportion of oxygen carriers in their blood, which makes oxygen desaturation even more serious.
In rare cases, the cartilaginous epiglottis may collapse if it is not yet sufficiently stiff due to development.
Sufficient oxygen saturation and undisturbed sleep are indispensable for the child's development!
Children who show the symptoms described above are often insomniac, restless and lack concentration. Hyperactivity with a low tendency to focus on a continuous activity or on play behaviour is also observed.
Due to the disturbed sleep architecture and the often additionally existing hearing loss, the risk of accidents increases considerably. For most children, this phase lasts only a short time and is strongly dependent on the individual frequency of infection. Others, however, suffer from these phenomena for months and should then also be medically examined by a specialist.
We also feel responsible for this and are happy to treat your child.

To begin with the person concerned and, if possible, their partner, are interviewed. Often they describe disturbing breathing noises, mostly during the inhalation phase, restless sleep or waking up frequently during the night. Sometimes they also describe longer pauses in breathing, which often cause the partner even more torment, because they raise worries about possible suffocation.
This is followed by a comprehensive specialist examination and diagnostics with specialized equipment.
The various diagnostic procedures include nasal function tests, drug-induced sleep endoscopy (MISE) for positional diagnosis, assessment of the contractility of the palate and throat (pharynx), assessment of the jaw and its position, the individual anatomy of the upper oesophagus and trachea as well as the larynx. We also use allergy tests, imaging methods (CT, DVT, MRI), polygraphy as outpatient diagnosis or polysomnography in the sleep laboratory.