It had healed over but the snoring had not returned. The phenomenon was clearly more complicated than we thought. The natural repair tissue was evidently stiff enough to stabilise the palate, so then attention turned to better ways of positioning scar tissue. The model was brought back into use and with it we conceived a technique for creating a sandwich structure, in which part of the palate surface is toughened making the resulting composite more resistant to bending. Today Peter Ellis has developed a surgical surface treatment that is proving extremely effective and our joint studies now address the question of diagnosing accurately the role of palate mobility in individual cases.
Palatal operations are unlikely to cure non-palatal problems.
Other airway instabilities are also the subject of our research and the new understanding that we expect to come from that might well contribute to future treatments. If those developments can avoid a call on the surgeon''s knife many of my friends will be delighted. The less extreme snoring conditions, ones not severe enough to justify potentially traumatic cures, are the cause of definite problems also, problems of which the snorer is no more aware than the contented Labrador - till awakened by a sharp elbow. John E Ffowcs Williams Back to Homepage .