Re: Question for Dr. Li about scarring
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Re: Question for Dr. Li about scarring

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Posted by Captin Cannuck on March 06, 2009 at 20:53:40:

In Reply to: Re: Question for Dr. Li about scarring posted by sleepsurgeon on March 06, 2009 at 18:07:40:

Dr. Li,

This is my concern with UPPP. It seems that there is a "wild card". A surgeon cannot really *know* for sure how a patient's body would react to cutting the tissue with a scalpel or using a laser for that matter to burn the tissue. A surgeon might cut one person's pharnyx without any excessive scarring. However, another person might be much more prone to scarring. When my brother puts an artificial hip into an old lady, she might scar. This is no big deal. I think that the the area at the back of the throat is a very different story. In that area, a few milimeters of tightness could be of extreme importance; it could be the difference between having sleep apnea and not having it.

To tell you the truth, I think that there is a kind of gamble when a UPPP is undertaken. There are plenty of people who I know from this board who had UPPPs by scalpels or lasers who got much worse after the operations. By the way, I understand your point that lasers generate more even more scar tissue than scalpels do. Nevertheless, there are a lot of people who have posted on this board that they got much worse after traditional UPPPs where scalpels were used. There are no shortage of examples. Just yesterday, Roger explained that this was his situation after his first UPPP. The same thing happened to posters such as bobmisteer, Apneamom and others.

I have long had a suspicion that these people might have had ordinary UPPPs. In other words, their surgeons did not make any mistakes, but rather they may have simply been more prone to scarring than another individual.

What you think about that idea?

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