**1. Introduction**

Sleep-related breathing disorders are pathological changes in respiratory pattern during sleep. They increase morbidity and mortality, decreasing the life quality of patients. The patients complaining about waking up restless and headache, daytime sleepiness, lack of concentration, emotional changes, and unbalanced blood pressure may probably have a secret sleep-related breathing disorder.

Dental sleep medicine is an area of dental practice that focuses on dental therapy to treat sleep-disordered breathing, including snoring and obstructive sleep apnea. Dentists who are

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

specialized in dental sleep medicine can diagnose the early signs and symptoms of potential obstructive sleep apnea.

**3. Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS)**

prevalence.

when a person is asleep.

in apnea and hypopnea.

sleep time [5–9].

heart arrhythmias, heart failure, and stroke can be seen in OSA patients.

saturation of 4% or more. It occurs due to partial airway obstruction.

term respiratory disturbance index (RDI) can be used instead of AHI.

*Arousal index* shows the average number of arousals per hour of sleep.

**4. Pathogenesis of obstructive sleep apnea**

Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome is a sleep-related breathing disorder that increases morbidity and mortality in patients, which is characterized by recurrent episodes of partial or complete upper airway obstructions and blood oxygen desaturation during sleep. This syndrome leads to severe long-term health problems as a result of the decrease in blood pressure during apnea and hypopnea episodes. Increased risk of high blood pressure, heart disease,

Contemporary Treatment Approaches to Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome

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OSAS prevalence is estimated at 3–7% in men and 2–5% in women. People from all ages, even pediatric and adolescent ages, can be affected from OSAS, but middle ages have the highest

*Apnea* is the arousal of breathing for 10 seconds or more. It is a full obstruction of the airway

*Hypopnea* is a reduction in ventilation of at least 50% that results in a decrease in arterial

*Apnea index* (*AI*) shows the average number of apneas and hypopneas per hour of sleep. The

*Arousal* is a sudden change from a deeper sleep stage to a superficial sleep stage. It ends up

*Minimum oxygen saturation* is the minimum oxygen saturation level recorded in the whole

Upper airway has a great tendency to obstruction. Any pathological change that narrows the airway leads to OSAS. The pharynx is the site of upper airway obstruction during sleep. The size of the pharyngeal lumen depends on the balance between the forces that narrows and dilates the airway. The force that narrows the upper airway is the suction type, negative air pressure occurring during inspiration, and personal anatomical factors. The force that dilates the upper airway is the tension of the genioglossus and tensor veli palatini muscles surrounding the airway and tension of other small muscles attached to the pharynx. The difference between the narrowing and dilating forces are called transmural pressure. During sleep the tension of the muscles surrounding the airway decreases. The tongue and soft palate displace to the posterior wall of the oropharynx and narrows the upper airway. The airflow rate increases due to the narrowing airway dimension. The increased airflow applies more negative, suction-type

There are some definitions and indexes in order to define and classify the syndrome:
