What are the Obstructive Sleep Apnea Guidelines?
Posted in sleep apnea information on 24. Apr, 2011
Posted By EightNine On 24th April 2011
Obstructive sleep apnea is actually quite common, it is just that many people who suffer from it don’t know about it. In an attempt to make it easier to diagnose the condition obstructive sleep apnea guidelines have been developed to help your doctor. This will help to ensure that the condition is diagnosed so that treatment can be started. Left untreated sleep apnea can lead to all kinds of medical issues.
One of the surprising things about sleep apnea is how few people know that they have it. The condition is quite common but the majority of people suffering from it don’t realize it. One of the reasons for that is that the symptoms of it occur when you are sleeping. This makes it hard to realize that you might have a problem and it also makes it difficult for your doctor to diagnose the condition. In order to help remedy this problem a number of obstructive sleep apnea guidelines have been developed to help your doctor to determine if there is a reason to be concerned enough to order more thorough testing.
The first step in the obstructive sleep apnea guidelines will be for your doctor to do an initial assessment of your condition based on what you tell him about your symptoms. The first thing that he will ask you about is your snoring since this is always an issue if you have apnea. He will also ask you questions about how well you sleep, if you ever wake up feeling unrefreshed or if you regularly feel sleepy during the day. If you have a spouse he will also want to talk to them about how you sleep, particularly if they notice that you stop breathing for brief periods in your sleep.
If the initial assessment suggests to your doctor that there is reason for concern the obstructive sleep apnea guidelines will next tell him that he should like for the likely causes of the condition. It is rare for sleep apnea to appear without any reason. The main one is being overweight, with a large neck circumference being the biggest issue here. Other physical factors would include residual tonsils, a receding lower jaw or a small pharynx. Your sleep apnea may also be caused by smoking, drinking right before bed, or by a thyroid problem.
If you have symptoms of sleep apnea and the doctor can see a reason that you might have then the obstructive sleep apnea guidelines suggest that he should then send you to a sleep clinic for a study. This will involve your sleeping at the clinic for a night so that they can monitor you while you sleep. This will provide them with all kinds of information on how you breathe while you are asleep. If it turns out that you do have obstructive sleep apnea there are quite a few treatment options that can be tried in order to relieve the problem.
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