Minor Adjustment but possibly Major problems!

Ok, so I went to the ortho today to get my pokey archwire cut, and ended up getting my powerchains replaced too. I sorta have a little plan worked out now. My ortho only schedules appts every 8 weeks. Since powerchains pretty much lose their effectiveness after about a week, I usually try and wait until about 1 month between my appointments. I schedule my pokey wire cuts on Friday with my regular assistant. She is really nice and very helpful..and on Fridays the ortho is out of the office. So she cuts my wire, and I ask "if you have time do you think I can get some new powerchains put on?" She of course says yes, so...I get like an adjustment between adjustments. I personally think its awesome.

So we are planning on BSSO (lower jaw advancement) in May. I probably need to reiterate that I'm doing all of this (ortho, SARPE, and surgery) strictly to rid myself of my sleep apnea, not for vanity whatsoever. That part is strictly a benefit of all of this. So as we are getting close I'm thinking..how the heck is a lower jaw advancment going to fix my apnea. When I go to sleep at night, my already underdeveloped jaw relaxes and falls back, causing my tongue to block my airways so I can't breathe. I used a mandibular advancement device before this that would pull my lower jaw forward so that my lower teeth were just underneath my uppers (probably where they would normally be if my jaw was not retronathic.) So if they do a BSSO, all that is going to do is extend my lower jaw and make it longer, but I don't see how that is going to fix my problem, if anything I could see me still having to use a mandibular advancement device, only now they would have to extend my jaw into a significant underbite because it would be longer instead of its normal underdeveloped length.

There is a surgical procedure to fix sleep apnea that involves a BSSO, however you also have to have a Lefort 1, to move your maxilla forward a bit also. It would definitly change my facial appearance, and I would then be having both upper and lower jaw surgery. There is also a procedure called a Genioglossus Advancement Which is sorta similar to a genioplasty in that it is done to the chin, and it can be combined with BSSO.

I scheduled an appointment with my Dental Sleep Medicine Doctor. My OS and Orthodontis are great, but one is dental surgeon. the other a teeth engineer, neither are experts on correcting sleep apnea. Imagine if I had all of this done and nothing changed. I would be do upset! So...I'm back in research mode trying to figure this out.

Brandy