Symptoms
Most patients with sleep apnea syndrome suffer from pronounced daytime sleepiness, fatigue, or concentration problems that significantly interfere with work and leisure activities. Often – not always – they are overweight patients or have very large adenoids or a short chin. In the course of the disease, high blood pressure is often seen, which can be treated with medication initially but later becomes more and more difficult. The loud snoring at night, which has usually been present for a long time, disturbs the other person in the bed and often leads to sleeping separately. Certain patients complain only of minor symptoms such as a dry mouth, a feeling of thirst at night, or a mild headache in the morning.
Snoring is currently still considered a harmless, albeit annoying phenomenon, which mainly disturbs the other person in the bed, but not the sleeper himself.
Causes
Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, also called “snoring with pauses in breathing,” affects at least 10% of men and 5% of women in the normal population with a severity that requires treatment. Mild forms of sleep apnea are found in up to 50% of men over 50 years of age and in up to 25% of older women, with the frequency increasing with age. In each case, repeated complete or partial pauses in breathing can be documented in the sleep laboratory, sometimes up to one or more pauses in breathing per minute. These recurrent pauses in breathing, which are not even noticed by the affected person, lead to serious negative impacts on sleep, impair recovery during sleep and explain sleepiness and concentration problems during the day. The severity of a sleep apnea syndrome is mainly determined by the number of breathing pauses per hour: < 5/hr = normal, 5-15/hr = mild form, 15-30/hr = moderate form and >30/ hr= severe form.
Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, which often increases in severity with age, quite commonly leads to worsening of other diseases (e.g. restless legs syndrome, insomnia, depression, sleep-related behavior disorders, epilepsy, or Parkinson’s disease).
What we can offer
Treatment/progression
The treatment of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome is provided in cooperation with a pulmonologist or an accredited sleep-wake center. It is important to clarify the relationship between breathing pauses and daytime symptoms and to make recommendations regarding improved behavior (sleep-wake rhythm, weight loss). These are provided to patients during our sleep-wake consultation.
If the patient is simply snoring but there is no significant sleep apnea syndrome, braces or surgery are available but these must be carefully considered.
Individual education about the dangers of microsleep at the wheel during daytime sleepiness are part of every physician’s duty of care – starting from the first consultation.
