Written by Ryan Nord, MD — Sleep Surgeon, VCU Health  ·  Data last updated: July 9, 2026 · updated quarterly

The priorities, ranked

Each person rated nine factors from 0–10, and the tool recorded which ones drove their result. Here’s how often each factor landed among a person’s top reasons:

Average importance ratings told the same story: surgeon experience 8.1 / 10, avoiding battery replacements 8.0, MRI flexibility 7.9.

The striking part, as the surgeon on the other side of these conversations: the top factor isn’t a device specification at all. And the practical, live-with-it-for-decades concerns — MRI access, battery surgeries, a nightly adhesive — outrank the things we tend to lead with in clinic, like the depth of the clinical evidence. Eighteen people specifically flagged that they couldn’t tolerate skin adhesives.

Preferences split almost evenly between the two implants

The tool weighs each person’s stated priorities — not brand — and neither device dominated. That’s notable given Genio only received FDA approval in 2025:

“Leaned” combines strong, moderate, and weak results for each device.

Who answered

The demographic questions are optional, so each breakdown below reflects only the people who answered it (the count is shown with each chart). The picture they paint: exactly the audience hypoglossal nerve stimulation exists for.

Among those who answered the remaining questions: 49 male, 35 female; insurance was mostly commercial (37) with Medicare next (10); and the most common way people found the tool was a friend (19), then their doctor (16), then a Google search (11).

Methods & honest limitations

• What this is: anonymous responses collected through the decision tool on this site between February 24 and July 9, 2026. No names, emails, or contact information are collected, and demographics are broad ranges only, reported here in aggregate. A response is logged only if the consent box is selected at submission and at least one priority is rated. Full transparency: the box comes pre-selected, and the tool requires it to generate a final recommendation — so this dataset reflects everyone who completed the tool, rather than a subset who opted in separately.
• Cleaning: from 169 raw submissions, I excluded 19 duplicate double-clicks, 20 minimal same-day responses from a single unexplained traffic burst, and 2 of my own test entries — leaving the 128 reported here. I’d rather undercount than overclaim.
• What this is not: a scientific study. It’s a convenience sample of people who found one educational website and chose to complete a questionnaire. It skews toward motivated online researchers, and the optional demographics reflect only those who answered. Treat it as counseling insight, not evidence.
• Disclosure: I consult for Inspire Medical Systems, and I have been a consultant for or received research support from Nyxoah (Genio’s manufacturer), LivaNova, and Avivomed — full disclosures are on the About page. The tool scores each person’s stated priorities against published device characteristics — the scoring logic never favors a brand, and this page reports what visitors said, unedited.