Apnea Test Useful Fact

A common sleep condition is called sleep apnea which causes you to cease breathing while you’re sleeping. While sleep apnea comes in a great many varieties, these generally do not cause death but there are conditions that might lead to important medical issues and put your life in danger. That is why it is of the utmost importance to be provided with a sleep apnea exam if you have an idea that you’re suffering from this sleep disorder.

There are several ways you can determine if you have a sleep apnea problem, and many who have sleep apnea also have a number of other symptoms in which sleep apnea is a side effect. For instance ,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 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 where the appropriate facilities and equipment are available.

The first thing to do is have a physical exam which consists of a good hard look at your mouth, throat and sinus areas. There will also be a detailed recording of a series of questions regarding how you feel about your quality of sleep. 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 going to be a PSG which stands for a polysomnogram which can be given via two methods. The first type of test is carried out overnight and consists of 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 the technician simply connects the necessary electrodes and allows for more convenient monitoring of the patient at home through the standard PSG. The result that is being looked for in determining the results of the test is a common measure called the respiratory disturbance index of RDI.

This expresses in numerical terms the amount of unnatural hitches which occurred in breathing over the course of the test. Here is the list of values frequently used when diagnosing a patient with sleep apnea. If the number of captured events over the period of an hour is more than twenty then the patient is usually recommended for treatment.

Occasionally, there are some added exams 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 more than 10 minutes to fall asleep so those who fall asleep in five minutes are considered good candidates for treatment. There is also a strip test that may be used in front of the sleep apnea exam in order to determine if there are further tests needed.