I know nothing about sleep apnea myself, but I do remember that a couple of months ago, it was all over the news here that the university of Antwerp (Belgium) had developed a revolutionary treatment. It seems with a relatively simple (you only need to remain one night in the hospital, and the procedure is done with a local anaesthetic) surgical procedure, they can prevent the tongue from 'dropping' into the airway while sleeping and effectively blocking the air transfer.

Read the press release here. I was released on August 21st 2007, so it's rather recent. Here you can see an animation of the procedure.

Once the procedure is completed, no more sleeping with a CPAP mask is necessary. Life returns to normal, so to speak.

Hope this helps.