I had mild sleep apnea and frequent snoring and had surgery to resolve it that has been successful. I was told that the following table defines the severity of sleep apnea based on number of disrupted breathing incidents per hour and the percentage of oxygen:
< 5 normal
5-19 & > 90% O2 mild
20-30 & 80-90% O2 moderate
> 30 & < 80% severe
I had 12 per hour and 93% O2 before the surgery. I had a strongly deviated septum so I had surgery to fix that and also had a radio-frequency (RF) treatment to reduce the size of the turbinates and also 3 RF treatments (over time) on the soft palate. The quoted rates for success were the following:
80-85% surgery success for sleep apnea & snoring
70-75% RF success for snoring only
For most of my life I never realized that it is normal to be able to breathe freely equally through both nostrils -- I was usually at least partially obstructed in one if not both. I also liked to sleep in and would be drowsy with too little sleep usually needing 9+ hours per night. Now I breathe well and can get up early with less sleep and feel refreshed. My doctor was Dr. Riley (more info
here). By the way, I've always been skinny (underweight) so weight was not the issue.
Additional information may be found
here.
Richard