Obstructive Sleep Apnea(ऑब्स्ट्रक्टिव स्लीप एपनिया): Treatment & diagnosis

In this video SimpliHealth expert Pulmonologist, Dr. Preeti Sharma is talking about Obstructive Sleep Apnea(ऑब्स्ट्रक्टिव स्लीप एपनिया) and also she is answering some questions that people ask like:

• How can we diagnose obstructive sleep apnea? 
• How can we treat it? 
• When should we consult the doctor? 
• What type of lifestyle modifications should be made? 
• What are its complications? 

Obstructive Sleep Apnea Diagnosis

If any person comes to the doctor with any problem like feeling very tired in the afternoon, loud snoring at night, facing difficulties in concentration, or sleepless nights. Based on this history, a sleep test is performed, called a polysomnography sleep test. It is an overnight sleep study that could be done at a hospital or home. In these many sensors are applied, one sensor is airflow sensor, patients heart rate and BP monitoring are performed, and patients’ abdominal and thoracic breathing movements are monitored with belts, even the eye movements are monitored. Even sleep stages are monitored with EEG. The patient is studied with all these leads, which is the overnight study and the result is called the apnea-hypopnea index, more commonly called AHI. 

Obstructive Sleep Apnea Treatment

With these results, the doctor inferres whether the patient has Obstructive sleep apnea or not. And if it is present, it is under which grade, is it mild or moderate or severe. Accordingly, the treatment for the patients is initiated. If it is a mild degree, our experts ask patients for lifestyle modification like weight reduction, and the doctor advises sleeping on their side. The doctor recommends avoiding alcohol and sleeping pills and sleeping on their side. So these things can help them, and not much is needed. But if it is moderate or severe, the doctor advises CPAP machines to patients. 

What are these? 

Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machines are machines in which doctors give the nasal mask to the patients that provides continuous air pressure, which opens the blockage in the passage that was causing obstructive sleep apnea. As a result, the patients can easily breathe, and they don’t feel any breathing sensation or apnea. Due to this, the patient sleeps well with no snoring, and they wake up fresh in the morning.

So this treatment is a very important treatment; however, patients first don’t understand this, but once they start using it, they start noticing some changes. They feel active because earlier the sleep, which was not complete or used to be in fragments, you were waking up in between, and you were not aware of it, but now that sleep is complete, the patients feel much better. In addition, if people say that they will ignore it and say they don’t need these machines, they will bring complications. Because if you are short of breath and there is less oxygen supply of blood to the organs of the body. 

What are your chances? 

There is the possibility of having a heart attack very much; if one has diabetes, then it may get uncontrolled; if someone has BP, then it may get uncontrolled, there is a chance of stroke. Also, the other life-threatening disease may get fatal because of obstructive sleep apnea. So it is very important to identify obstructive sleep apnea, get it diagnosed, get treatment, and, if needed, use a CPAP machine, which is very important for your life. So if you do these things along with lifestyle modification like early dinner. Few exercises can be done, such as walking, working on weight reduction and looking at your health benefits to reduce the use of CPAP machines.

So the doctor says, please consult your sleep specialist and get treatment advice about what is good for you or bad so that it doesn’t get too fatal.