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Excessive Sleepiness
Clinicians should be alert to patients reporting excessive daytime sleepiness, or EDS, says the European Society of Cardiology, after a study found healthy elderly people who regularly report feeling sleepy during the day have a significantly higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
The Three City study, published in Stroke, by the American Heart Association, found elderly people who reported excessive daytime sleepiness have a 49 percent relative risk increase of cardiovascular death from cerebrovascular disease, myocardial infarction, and heart failure, compared to those who do not report problem sleepiness during waking hours.
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Repetitive blockages of the airway, called obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), can reduce airflow or cause breathing to stop. When this happens, frequent brief awakenings can leave a person feeling excessively sleepy during the day, even though they believe they have had a full night’s sleep. More serious consequences, including obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and diabetes — are often related to OSA.
Primary care physicians must be able to recognize symptoms of OSA and counsel their patients to provide optimal treatment.
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Ever have one of those days when it’s the middle of day and you just can’t stay awake? If it happens frequently, it may be an indicator of obstructed nasal passages and sleep-disordered breathing, according to a study published in the October 2007 edition of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.
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Patients who snore or have other symptoms of sleep apnea often undergo testing in a sleep laboratory to measure the number of breathing pauses and arousals that occur while they slumber. But doctors find these tests do not effectively predict daytime consequences suspected to arise from sleep apnea, such as sleepiness in adults or hyperactivity in children.
Now, neurologists at the University of Michigan Health System and engineers at Altarum Institute in Ann Arbor, Mich., have discovered evidence that the disruption of sleep in sleep apnea may be much more frequent than the breathing pauses, or apneas, themselves.
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Interesting Apnea Statistics
~~ Apnea in United States ~~
As of May 2, 2009 at 9:47 p.m. (-0500) (ET), the U.S. population
was 306,340,710. Sleep researchers estimate approximately seven percent
of the population suffers from obstructive sleep apnea. Using that
estimate, there are potentially 21,443,850 apneics in the U.S.
~~ Apnea around the world ~~
As of May 2, 2009 at 9:47 p.m. (-0500) (ET), the world population
was 6,777,286,604. Sleep researchers estimate approximately seven percent
of the population suffers from obstructive sleep apnea. Using that
estimate, there are potentially 474,410,062 apneics in the world.
