Free Helpful Information About
Sleep Apnea Testing Equipment

Sleep apnea is a complaint which causes you to cease respiring while you’re asleep. While sleep apnea comes in a great many varieties, these generally do not cause death but the’re situations where it might cause severe health issues and expose you to life threatening hazards. This is why it is essential to be administered a sleep apnea exam if you have a belief that you’re hurting from this sleep complaint.

There are several ways you can determine if you have a sleep apnea problem, and many people who suffer have a number of symptoms or may even have sleep apnea as a side effect. Some good examples of this are ,fatigue, gaining weight, and mental tiredness all of which are aggravated by sleep apnea, and they may even experience dryness in he mouth or may wake up experiencing a panic attack like episode, with choking and gasping.

Insomnia may be a part of your sleep disorder but the best means to determine if your symptoms are induced by sleep apnea is to spend some time to be tested for sleep apnea. A sleep apnea test is usually given at a sleep center but can also be done at hospitals and clinics that have overnight facilities and diagnostic equipment.

The first step is a physical exam which is comprised of a physical check on your nose, throat and palate. There should also be of a series of questions regarding the following subjects, sleep quality, patterns, disturbances and impressions. The very next step in the process is to keep you over night where a recording is done.

The most common recording test used during this process is a polysomnogram or PSG, which can be given via two methods. The first type of test is the overnight sleep test and is comprised of monitoring the following activities; your breathing, heart rate, level of oxygen in your blood and your brain level.

The second type covers a home monitoring version of the test where a skilled technician attaches the proper electrodes and allows for more convenient monitoring of the patient at home through the standard PSG. The result that is being looked for 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 times you experience a negative breathing pattern which occurred in breathing over the course of the test. Here is the list of values frequently used when judging whether or not a person has sleep apnea. If the number of captured events over the period of an hour is higher than twenty the doctor can diagnose the patient with a form of sleep disorder, possibly sleep apnea.

There are additional tests which may be requested such as a multiple sleep latency exam which figures out how poorly you are actually sleeping. A normal person requires, on average, roughly 10 minutes to fall into a restful sleep so individuals who can fall asleep in less than five minutes are usually recommended for treatment. A strip test can also be administered in front of the sleep apnea exam in order to determine if one is needed.