Sleep Apnea

Why Haven’t You Heard of Sleep Apnea Before ?

Posted on 05. Dec, 2009 by admin in Diagnosing and Treating Sleep Apnea

It has been estimated that 20 million Americans may have sleep apnea. Among 30- to 60-year-olds, one of every four men and one of every 10 women show some signs of sleep apnea. In a study of industrial workers in Israel, one of every five was classified as having some degree of sleep apnea. These are surprisingly large numbers of people, considering that a few years ago hardly anybody had ever heard of sleep apnea.

So if sleep apnea is this common, why haven’t you heard about it before? The answer is that sleep apnea has always been around, but it was not recognized by the medical community until recently.

One of the earliest descriptions of sleep apnea was published in 1877 by an observant medical man named W. H. Broadbent. He did not call the condition sleep apnea, but he described the two major types of apnea that today are called obstructive apnea and central apnea.

During the late 1800s several additional reports were published about patients who suffered from abnormal daytime sleepiness and had difficulty breathing while asleep. In 1890 an early American neurologist and toxicologist named Silas Weir Mitchell wrote the first detailed accounts of a breathing disorder that occurred during sleep and began to unravel the mystery of what causes sleep apnea.

Unfortunately for those suffering from sleep apnea, bacteria came into vogue soon after that. Medical attention focused on sleep diseases that were caused by microbes, such as sleeping sickness, and little interest or credence was given to other kinds of sleep disorders or their causes. As a result, much of what had been learned or suggested about sleep disorders lapsed into neglect.

It was not until the 1950s that several groups of scientists began to make careful observations of actual sleeping people. They developed an electronic technique for measuring and studying sleep, called polysomnography. Using this technique, they began to discover interesting things about what goes on during sleep. They learned, for example, that sleep is not at all a time of peaceful inactivity. This unexpected discovery stimulated an explosion of interest in sleep research and intensified the quest for a better understanding of sleep, both normal and abnormal.

It soon became apparent that events during sleep can profoundly affect a person’s health. As explained by Dr. William Dement, one of the leaders in this field, “It is possible for individuals to be entirely normal awake and deathly ill asleep.” Thus a new field of medicine — sleep disorders medicine — began to take shape.

In the past 15 years sleep researchers have learned how to recognize the signs of various abnormal sleep conditions — sleep apnea and other forms of sleep-disordered breathing, narcolepsy, nocturnal myoclonus, idiopathic central nervous system hypersomnolence, and others — that previously had been difficult or impossible to diagnose. Physicians are becoming better informed and are beginning to diagnose sleep apnea in patients who previously might simply have been treated for insomnia, heart problems, or some other symptom.

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Tags: Diagnosing, Sleep Apnea, Treating