A young woman weighed over 100 pounds and suffered from severe sleep apnea! Complete weight loss surgery + sleep surgery at one time

Patients with sleep apnea often have obesity problems. In the past, when encountering such a situation, most doctors would recommend that patients treat them "separately". In fact, if only sleep surgery is performed, the improvement in the patient's obesity after the surgery is very limited. It is now possible to complete weight loss surgery and ENT sleep surgery at the same time, which improves the patient's prognosis and solves the problems of sleep and obesity.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare's Taichung Hospital's comprehensive sleep medicine integration team provides customized and personalized treatment services. (Photo provided by Taichung Hospital, Ministry of Health and Welfare)

Ms. Zeng, 24 years old, snored very loudly at night and would even stop breathing suddenly. She was often tired during the day and weighed 102 kg. She knew she had severe sleep apnea and had used a CPAP machine intermittently, but she was not used to wearing it. She sought help from the Department of Otolaryngology of the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Taichung Hospital. The doctor diagnosed her with severe mixed sleep apnea, large tonsils, long hanging tonsils, a thick tongue root, narrow throat side wall space, and obvious adenoid hypertrophy.

Complete weight loss surgery + sleep surgery at one time

Under the interdisciplinary integration plan of Taichung Hospital, Ms. Zeng accepted the doctor's advice and cooperated with the general surgery, otolaryngology and head and neck surgery, and anesthesiology departments to perform interdisciplinary integrated surgery. That is, under the close monitoring of the anesthesiology department, the general surgery weight loss surgery and the otolaryngology sleep surgery were performed at the same time. Finally, the sleep quality was improved and the problem of overweight was greatly improved.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare's Taichung Hospital adopted cross-disciplinary integrated surgery. Under the close monitoring of the anesthesiology department, it simultaneously performed general surgery bariatric surgery and otolaryngology sleep surgery in the same operation, ultimately helping the patient to improve his sleep quality and significantly improve the problem of overweight. (Photo provided by Taichung Hospital, Ministry of Health and Welfare)

Dr. Cai Jinhong, a general surgeon at Taichung Hospital under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, pointed out that obesity is a chronic disease that is often accompanied by sleep apnea, and the two are causally related. The traditional definition of successful weight loss surgery is "reduction of body weight above normal weight to 60%" within one year. Ms. Zeng achieved a 56% reduction in just three months after the operation, with her body mass index (BMI) dropping from 39.4 to 32.8 and her weight dropping from 102 kg to 86 kg.

Dr. Chi Zhaoyun from the Department of Otolaryngology at Taichung Hospital under the Ministry of Health and Welfare pointed out that in the past, when encountering patients with sleep apnea and obesity, most of them would recommend that the patients be treated "separately". If only sleep surgery was performed, the improvement in the patient's obesity would be very limited after the surgery. The effectiveness of this operation, both in terms of the patient's subjective feeling and objectively, was a 71.3% reduction in the hourly apnea index, exceeding the traditional definition of successful sleep surgery (a reduction of more than 50% and less than 15 times per hour). The rapid eye movement apnea index dropped from 56.8 times per hour to 26.9 times. General surgical weight loss surgery will be performed first, mostly under laparoscopy, which takes about 1.5 hours. Next, the multi-level sleep surgery of the otolaryngology and head and neck surgery department will take over, which also takes about 1.5 hours. The hospitalization after the operation is about 5 days, and a nasogastric tube diet will be used for 1-2 days after the operation.

A comprehensive sleep medicine integrated team, providing customized personalized treatment services

One third of a person's life is spent sleeping, and good sleep is an important cornerstone of health. Sleep medicine is a cross-disciplinary key science. In addition to integrating many specialties, combining AI artificial intelligence, big data, etc., or developing new diagnostic or treatment equipment are all current hot research trends. The Ministry of Health and Welfare's Taichung Hospital's comprehensive sleep medicine integration team provides "patient-centered" intelligent integrated sleep medicine care services, combining specialists such as otolaryngology, head and neck surgery, general surgery, thoracic medicine, family medicine, neurology, dentistry, psychiatry, and traditional Chinese medicine to provide customized treatment plans for individuals. Through objective medical judgment and analysis of treatment, the team uses intelligent medical systems to provide customized personalized treatment and integrated medicine services.