Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea is a serious disorder that causes your breathing to stop repeatedly while you sleep. Several factors can influence the AHI value derived from PSG recordings.1,7-9 For example, the technology used to assess airflow has evolved from reliance on oronasal thermistor technology to addition of the nasal pressure signal, which is more sensitive for detection of mild reductions in airflow.7 The current prevalence estimates for OSA are derived from studies that used thermistor technology only.10,11 Addition of nasal pressure analysis would likely increase detection of respiratory events and thus OSA prevalence.
A study in the October issue of Anesthesiology shows that diagnosing Nasal Surgery and prescribing CPAP therapy prior to surgery significantly reduced postoperative cardiovascular complications - specifically cardiac arrest and shock - by more than half.

In recent years, a strategy of home sleep apnea testing followed by initiation of autotitrating continuous positive airway pressure therapy in the home has greatly reduced barriers to diagnosis and treatment and has also facilitated routine management of OSA by primary care providers.
Unlike obstructive sleep apnea, which is caused by a physical blockage, central sleep apnea is a neurological problem, says Robson Capasso, MD , chief of sleep surgery and associate professor of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine in California.

Untreated sleep apnea has been linked to high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, liver problems and possibly even dementia Research has also shown that older adults with excessive daytime sleepiness and moderate to severe sleep apnea are more than twice as likely to die than those who don't have it.
An estimated 1 in 4 African-Americans in the United States have moderate or severe sleep apnea, but most have not been diagnosed or treated by a doctor, according to a 2018 study led by Johnson when she worked at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

These craniofacial risk factors have been reported to have their strongest association with sleep apnea in nonobese patients ( 14 ). Several studies have also demonstrated family aggregation of craniofacial morphology (reduction in posterior airway space, increase in mandibular to hyoid distance, inferior hyoid placement) in patients with sleep apnea ( 15 , 16 ). The data from these studies indicate that elements of craniofacial structure in patients with sleep apnea are inherited.