Healthy Obsessions The Adventures of a Mild Obsessive Compulsive

Tag Archives: Turbinates

The Day After Turbinate Reduction

October 27, 2010 12:28 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

 

Turbinate Reduction (snagged from Atlanta Snoring Institute)

 

It felt very weird. Not painful, but weird. The whole process took less than an hour.

Step 1

The doctor’s assistant numbed the inside of my nose using lidocaine on a q-tip.

Step 2

The doctor injected a local anesthetic twice on both sides. That’s when I started feeling light headed. It’s apparently very common for patients to faint at that point, since the injections are taking place in an area with a lot of nerves.

Dr. Robson Capasso (who introduces himself by his first name, which I like) tilted the chair back for me as soon as I said I was feeling light headed (which nicely prevented me from falling out of the chair, yay). He had a resident shadowing him, and so he was explaining as he did things (and you know how awesome I find that).

Step 3

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Posted in: Medical, Sleep ⋅ Tagged: , , ,

Turbinate Reduction, Because Breathing is Fun

October 26, 2010 12:26 pm ⋅ 9 Comments ⋅

Today at 3:00 I’ll be sitting in an exam room at the Stanford Sleep Clinic, essentially getting the inside of my nose cooked. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?

It’s called radiofrequency turbinate reduction. My boyfriend got it done, also, as part of his general sleep apnea surgery four or five years ago (his surgery worked; sadly, I am not a candidate for that same surgery since I do not have the same structural cause).

But back to the procedure itself. To quote obstructednose.com:

All of these methods aim to shrink the underlying turbinate by applying heat to the surface lining of the turbinate and creating a lesion. A probe is inserted into the turbinate tissue between one and six times, while the needle is heated and the underlying tissue is shrunk.

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Posted in: Medical, Sleep ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,