Sleep Apnea

Hi,

I am Dr. Nilesh Chinchkar, Pulmonologist. Today I will talk on sleep apnea. Apnea means stoppage of breathing. Symptoms of sleep apnea are excessive snoring, excessive day time sleepiness, lack of concentration, fatigueness, morning headache, loss of memory. How does this develop? It is very common in obese people or who gain weight very rapidly. It may also present since birth congenitally. Tere is crowding of the throat structure. It happens to fall on the airway. Because of this, there is a blockage of the airway completely. Because of the air will not pass and the problem will arise in the lungs. Because of this, there is a lack of oxygen in the body. The brain sends a strong signal because of this obstruction. After sending signals from the brain, this structure got removed from the airway and the passage of the air gets clear and air enters into the lungs.

These things during sleep happen many times. Many times patient's brain needs to do work during the sleep. The patient thinks that he has slept for the whole night but actually his brain was working throughout the night. And because of this brain causes excessive sleepiness in the day time. Lack of sleep causes loss of memory gives you morning headache and it may also cause road accidents because the patient may sleep at the driving time. It is extremely important to get yourself diagnosed because it may also lead to hypothyroidism, It is also linked with diabetes and diabetes chances are 3 times more as compare to the normal individual and high chances of development of stroke and some infection may also be developed. We do the diagnosis with polysomnography test which is conducted during sleeping hours. It is also known as the sleeping test. We attach electrodes to the patient's body.

We attach the same with head, eyes, chin, abdominal belt and then to the lower limbs. It detects all kind of sleep cycles. It also detects lean moments, postures, eye movement. It gives us oxygen saturation level Based on this test, we categories sleep apnea in the mild-moderate and severe category. Based on that, we call the patient for similar tests. We put the airway passage solution throughout the sleep. This keeps the patient pop up, therefore, air easily passes and there is no fall of throat structure on the airway. Therefore there is not the development of apnea and patient do not get any symptoms. On another night, if there is an improvement in the apnea score and the oxygen level then we advise patients to use CPAP machine daily at night. After the use of the machine for a few days, the patient gets rid of all those symptoms and his quality of life improves. Therefore, friends, it is absolutely important to know the pathology of the symptoms because it is linked to many severe diseases and it is also important to treat and to improve the quality of life.

Thank You!