A Sleep Apnea Test

Sleep apnea is a condition which causes a painful respite in respiration while you’re in bed. While sleep apnea comes in many forms, these by and large don’t cause death but there are circumstances that might lead to grave medical troubles and threaten your life. it’s of great relevance to have a sleep apnea examination if you have an idea that you’re losing rest from this trouble.

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. Some good examples of this are ,obesity, depression, and chronic fatigue syndrome all may be caused by sleep apnea, and they will also have cotton mouth or waking up often with a panic attack.

You may also experience insomnia but the best means to determine if your symptoms are induced 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 where the appropriate facilities and equipment are available.

The first step is a physical exam which consists of a good hard look at your mouth, throat and sinus areas. To better understand your problem there will be an interview with questions showing your sleep quality, sleep patterns and feelings about how well you are sleeping. The next step is to have the patient stay overnight where a video record is made of how you slept.

The test they commonly use to check your sleep health is a polysomnogram or PSG, which is administered in to various forms. The first variety is the overnight test and involves monitoring the following activities; your heart rate, your breathing pattern, your eye movement and also your 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 something called the RDI or the respiratory disturbance index.

Numerical terms express the number of times you experience a negative breathing pattern which may have disrupted your pattern of breathing through the night. The following values are usually used when diagnosing a patient with sleep apnea. If the number of abnormal events in an hour is over twenty in number the doctor can diagnose the patient with a form of sleep disorder, possibly sleep apnea.

There are some additional examinations which could be called for like a multiple sleep latency examination which figures out how poorly you are actually sleeping. A normal person requires, on average, around 10 minutes to begin to fall asleep so those who fall straight into a deep sleep in under five minutes should get some intervention. A strip test can also be administered in front of the sleep apnea exam in order to determine if one is needed.