Home Testing For Sleep Apnea

A great many people suffer from a disorder known as sleep apnea which causes you to quit breathing while you are sleeping. While sleep apnea comes in numerous varieties, these generally don’t cause death but there are circumstances where it may cause severe health issues and threaten your life. it’s of great relevance to acquire a sleep apnea test if you have an idea that you’re missing rest from this problem.

There are several ways you can determine if you are suffering from sleep apnea, and many unfortunate people suffer from other symptoms or conditions in which sleep problems chronic. For instance , weight gain, fatigue, and mental depression all of which may be caused by sleep problems, and they will also have cotton mouth or waking up often with a panic attack.

You may experience insomnia along with your sleep disorder but the only true way to discern whether or not your symptoms are caused by sleep apnea is to take a sleep apnea test. This test is usually administered at a sleep center but can also be done at hospitals and clinics that have overnight facilities and diagnostic equipment.

You’ll need to take a physical exam which consists of a physical check on your nose, throat and palate. There will also be a detailed recording of a series of questions regarding how you feel about your quality of sleep. The doctors will want to keep you over night where a record is kept of how well you sleep.

The most common recording test used during this process is going to be a PSG which stands for a polysomnogram which comes in two varieties. The first type of test is the overnight sleep test and is comprised of monitoring the following activities; breathing patterns, heart rate, blood oxygen level, eye movement and brain activity.

The second way this can be tested is at home where the technician simply connects the necessary electrodes and allows the patient to monitor their results at home through a polysomnograph. What they will be trying to discern in judging if the test is positive or negative is a common measure called the respiratory disturbance index of RDI.

This expresses in numerical terms the number of abnormal events which disrupted your breathing over the entire test. The following values are usually used when deciding if someone has a sleep apnea issue. If the total amount of interruptions over an hour is over twenty in number the doctor can diagnose the patient with a form of sleep disorder, possibly sleep apnea.

There are additional tests which may also be requested including a multiple sleep latency test that assesses the amount of fatigue which is caused by the lack of restful sleep. A normal person requires, on average, more than 10 minutes to fall asleep so those who fall asleep in five minutes are considered good candidates for treatment. A strip test is also helpful to take prior to the sleep apnea test to determine if one is needed.