On The Beat 9/29/20 - OCH Huxford Clinic

On today's On The Beat, Dr. Huxford from OCH Huxford Clinic joins Troy to talk about a new treatment for Sleep Apnea.

Troy thompson: welcome to on the beat, everyone.

I'm troy thompson.

Joining me today is dr. huxford.

How are you, my friend?

Dr. huxford: very good to see you.

Thank you very much for having me.

Troy thompson: of course.

We have interviewed you many times in regards to sleep apnea.

Just remind everyone at home, who may or may not think they have sleep apnea, what is it?

Dr. huxford: the most common symptom that you're going to hear from either a friend or a spouse or someone is that loud snoring, witnessed breathing pauses in the night, and then the person themselves will complain of excessive sleepiness, really no matter how much sleep they get.

Troy thompson: gotcha.

All right.

Well, there's a new treatment out or a new machinery or something along those lines that you wanted to talk about today.

And it's a new non-cpap treatment for osa called inspire.

Dr. huxford: yes, it's very neat.

It's relatively new.

Obviously, any of these new things have been studied for a long time before they're actually brought to market, but this is a non-cpap treatment.

It is essentially a pacemaker, if you will, that it gets implanted under the skin in your chest.

It has two electrodes, one that innervates the muscles between your ribs.

They're called intercostal muscles.

And the other goes to the nerve that controls your tongue.

And so it is controlled with a remote control.

So if the person forgets to turn it on and then they start snoring or whatever, then the wife or the husband or whoever can press the button.

It turns them on.

It senses when you take a deep breath, the one that controls the muscles, the one that innervates the nerves in your chest.

And when that happens, it causes the tongue to protrude forward, comes out of the back of your back of your mouth.

Dr. huxford: the tongue doesn't go out of your mouth.

So it's not constantly like a flickering tongue from a snake or something.

But when the tongue comes forward, creates more space, so the apnea and the snoring goes away.

And then when the chest one since as you exhale, it relaxes the tongue and it goes back into its normal position.

That occurs throughout the night.

Troy thompson: how far does the issue need to be before you resort to this?

Dr. huxford: the requirements are that you have to have moderate to severe sleep apnea.

And that's a grade that we give based on the results of the test itself, and that you just have to have failed cpap.

It could be you didn't like it.

You can't wear it.

You don't want to wear it.

So those are the only criteria.

There are certain weight restrictions, but we can work through that.

Troy thompson: really?

So this is the next level up.

When did this all start to come about?

Dr. huxford: i became aware of it last year, 2019 before the covid issue.

But there's thousands of patients who've been studied with this in order to bring it to market.

And we are fortunate in our area based on the insurance.

There's a provider there in the columbus area who provides it for commercial insurance.

If you have medicare, then we have to send you to jackson, but we've had, i think, three people do it thus far through my clinic.

Other clinics are doing them, as well, and we've had good results with it.

Troy thompson: how long does the procedure take to happen?

Dr. huxford: there's a screening process... the person doing it in columbus is dr. griffin, an oral surgeon... and there's a screening process involved.

And then the procedure itself is very quick.

It's an outpatient procedure.

Not even an hour.

And then you have to let it rest for about 30 days before we can activate it.

Troy thompson: and i love that you said that it can be claimed as part of your insurance.

Dr. huxford: discuss with your sleep provider, whether that's me or someone else, first.

If you're doing great with your cpap, no problems, there's no reason to change.

But there's a lot of folks who can't tolerate cpap and we have to have another approach.

Troy thompson: well, dr. huxford,as again, you always give us great information.

We appreciate you.

Dr. huxford: thank you very much, troy.

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Troy thompson: thank you.

If you want to find out more information about dr. huxford or his clinic, och huxford clinic, give them a call.

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