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Phototherapy for Non-responders to Oral Appliance Therapy for Obstructive Sleep Apnea

NCT06960200 · Status: RECRUITING · Phase: PHASE2 · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 528

Last updated 2025-05-07

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a medical condition where a person has great difficulty with breathing, or stops breathing all together, while asleep. This is a medical condition for which one of the current standard treatments is the use of a custom made dental appliance to help hold the person's airway open while asleep so that the person does not suffocate while sleeping. However, while the majority of OSA patients are able to tolerate the use of oral appliance therapy (OAT) for OSA, some patients are incomplete responders to OAT. These patients, despite having improvement, may still have a disease index above the diagnostic threshold for OSA.

Phototherapy (laser therapy) has been used as a method to stiffen the soft palate and parts of the tongue to prevent their collapse. This is a type of cold laser therapy that does not cut/ablate tissue (similar to healing laser therapies). This has been shown to help with both snoring and can also help with OSA, as soft palate and tongue collapse are common areas for where OSA occurs inside the airway. A recent pilot study has shown that phototherapy on its own may be able to treat selected patients with mild, moderate, or severe OSA. To our knowledge, there are no contraindications to combining phototherapy and dental sleep appliance therapy.

Conditions

Interventions

DEVICE

Phototherapy

Non-surgical laser therapy (phototherapy)

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University of Alberta

    lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2024-01-05
Primary Completion
2030-12-31
Completion
2030-12-31

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT06960200 on ClinicalTrials.gov