Related Tip About Free Sleep Apnea Testing
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010Related Tip About
Free Sleep Apnea Testing
Sleep apnea is a condition which causes you to stop respiring while you’re in bed. While sleep apnea comes in many varieties, these in the main do not cause death but there are certain situations where there may be challenging health outcomes and put your life in peril. it is of great relevance to get a sleep apnea test if you have an inkling that you’re hurting from this sleep disorder.
There are a number of ways that you can tell if you may be experiencing sleep apnea, and many people who suffer have a number of symptoms or may even have sleep apnea as a side effect. For example ,fatigue, gaining weight, and mental tiredness all of which are aggravated by sleep apnea, and they also might have dry mouth or a sudden panic attack upon waking up.
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. This test is usually administered at a center for sleep disorders but can be given in a doctor’s office that have overnight facilities and diagnostic equipment.
The first thing to do is have a physical exam which is comprised of a good hard look at your mouth, throat and sinus areas. There will also be a detailed recording an interview with questions showing your sleep quality, sleep patterns and feelings about how well you are sleeping. The very next step in the process is to have you sleep with them overnight where a recording is done.
The common test to record your sleep patterns is the PSG or polysomnogram, which comes in two varieties. 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 type covers a home monitoring version of the test where a skilled technician attaches the proper electrodes and allows the patient to monitor their results at home through a polysomnograph. The result that is being looked for when deciding whether the results of the test are good or bad is something called the RDI or the respiratory disturbance index.
Numerical terms express the number of abnormal events 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 then the patient is diagnosed with some form of sleep apnea.
There are additional tests which may be requested such as a multiple sleep latency exam which assesses the amount of fatigue which is caused by the lack of restful sleep. Normally, a person requires roughly 10 minutes to fall into a restful sleep so those who fall straight into a deep sleep in under five minutes should get some intervention. There is also a strip test that may be used just before the sleep apnea test to see of further testing is needed.