Palatal surgery for snoring: objective long-term evaluation

Snoring surgery has mainly been assessed in the literature using subjective outcome measures with some evidence to indicate that the benefits of surgery are short lived. There is remarkably little published on the objective outcome of snoring surgery. We reported previously short-term (2-11 months) objective results on 38 patients who had palatal surgery. All the patients had preoperative and postoperative objective assessment of their snoring loudness and duration in the home. The current study presents the long-term objective results of 24 patients from the same cohort. All patients who were included in our study had palatal snoring confirmed on sleep nasendoscopy. and none of them had significant obstructive sleep apnoea. The median follow-up period was 45 months (range 29-56 months). Overall, the mean snore index (SI) at long-term follow-up was significantly less than the preoperative SI (P < 0.0001). There was no significant difference between the short-term and the long-term results regarding the fall in the SI. This study is the first to use postoperative objective assessment in the home and to demonstrate that snoring reduction is maintained for several years after snoring surgery.