Positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy remains the most used, most understood, and most successful method for the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and has been shown to reduce a patient’s apnea-hypopnea index (AHI)—the number of apnea and hypopnea events experienced per hour—by an average of 86%. 1314
Although anti-obesity medications, including GLP-1s, have been shown to be an effective tool for weight management in some individuals, to date, there have been no research studies that compare the effectiveness of PAP therapy against anti-obesity medications for the treatment of OSA.
Clinical research has demonstrated that in patients with moderate-to-severe obesity-related OSA, the combination of PAP therapy and weight loss has been shown to be more beneficial than either treatment in isolation. 15