SLEEP APNEA TESTING

Sleep apnea testing is essential to determine if a person is suffering from this sleep disorder, that involves short periods of disruption in breathing while asleep. These disruptions are termed sleep apnea if they last for at least 10 seconds at a time and happen at least 5 times in an hour. There are instances where patients have suffered hundreds of such episodes during a single night’ sleep. Most of the time, the person afflicted with this disorder is totally unaware about it unless the spouse or the partner mentions certain signs such as loud snoring that can be quite disturbing while trying to get a good night’s rest.

Signs and symptoms of sleep apnea Besides loud snoring, frequent silences, choking or gasping, sudden awakenings during sleep and daytime sleepiness should alert you to the possibility of suffering from sleep apnea. Any number of questions put to the doctor in this regard can only be answered accurately with sleep apnea testing.

The Sleep Apnea test – The Deciding Factor

When you approach the doctor with one or more of these signs, a sleep study called polysomnograph is ordered to diagnose sleep apnea. This is a standard method for testing for and diagnosing the treatable sleep disorder obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), in which the patient’s air passage gets blocked during sleep. When suffering from OSA, usually the tongue or soft palate or both fall backward and block the airway. There is a danger of breathing becoming either precariously shallow or maybe even stopping altogether.

Goals of sleep apnea testing

* To learn and determine sleep efficiency and breathing problems during sleep

* To determine the severity of the breathing problems

* To find out if blood oxygen content drops to dangerous levels

* To see if you develop significant alterations in heart rhythm due to breathing difficulties

The Polysomnograph Procedure

There are two types of polysomnographs – An overnight polysomnography test, which is typically conducted at the clinic to monitor brain waves, muscle tension, eye movement, oxygen level in the blood and respiration. The home monitoring test is the other kind where a sleep technologist guides you on how to connect all the electrodes to yourself and provides instructions on how to record sleep with a computerized polysomnograph that you can take home and return it once the test is conducted.

Sleep efficiency is determined by measuring the time spent in different phases of sleep – REM (rapid eye movement) and NREM, consisting of four stages of sleep based on the type of brain waves detected by EEG (electroencephalogram measures the electromagnetic waves discharged by the brain due to neuronal electrical activity).

Sleep is more complex than you realize and this form of sleep apnea testing brings to the fore the efficiency of polysomnography in not only demonstrating if you have slept at all during the night but also minute details that are required to find if you do have sleep apnea.