The main obstructive plane in patients with OSAHS was the retropalatal region. An awake upper airway CT scan can properly diagnose palatopharyngeal obstruction; however, it is not suitable for detecting retroglossal obstruction.

Disease severity, glucose and lipid metabolism, and Friedman OSA stage may be important predictors of surgical outcome of UPPP for OSAHS.

A conventional method of avoiding normal tissue overheating during focused ultrasound surgery (FUS) is to apply equal heating duration for each sonication in between cooling intervals. However, this method is time-consuming and expensive. A novel method with unequal heating duration in different scanning paths without cooling intervals was investigated in this paper. This method was compared with the conventional method through the ablation of a 10 × 10 cm(2) target. The simulation results indicated that the new method was able to reduce treatment time by more than 50%, with higher than 95% coverage index, and more uniform thermal dose distribution. The method was further verified through the ablation of a circular lesion. Ex vivo experiments were also performed to confirm the simulation results. Both simulation and experimental results have proven that the new method can increase heating efficiency, and are a promising new approach in FUS.