Understanding Your Obstructive Sleep Apnea Diagnosis

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder that prevents breathing multiple times while sleeping. Each interruption is called an “apnea,” an ancient Greek word meaning “without breath.” With sleep apnea, you may stop breathing for seconds to minutes hundreds of times a night.

It’s estimated that about 25% of untested women and men in the United States have sleep apnea. The most common form of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), in which some portion of your anatomy blocks your airway while you sleep, leading to:

• Snoring
• Gasping
• Gagging
• Waking up
• Daytime sleepiness
• Dry throat
• Headaches
• Brain fog
• Irritability

At Advanced Medical Care, we diagnose and treat OSA, central sleep apnea, and other sleep disorders. Our experienced providers take sleep medicine seriously and may recommend an in-office test at our facilities in Queens and Brooklyn, New York, or a home test to diagnose sleep disorders.

If you’ve had your sleep analyzed and have been told that you have OSA, what does that mean? And, more importantly, what should you do next?

What a sleep test measures

Whether you take a nocturnal polysomnography test in our office or an at-home test, the purpose of a sleep study is to determine how well you sleep. The tests measure your vital signs while you sleep, including:

• Breathing pattern
• Brain activity
• Body movement
• Blood oxygen level

The tests also count and rate the number of sleep disturbances you experience.

About apneas and hypopneas

An apnea is when you completely stop breathing for seconds at a time. A hypopnea isn’t a full cessation of breathing, but neither is it a full breath; it’s taking a breath through a partially blocked airway.

When you breathe through an airway that isn’t completely open, it’s like trying to suck a thick milkshake through a straw. The breath isn’t delivered optimally so you don’t get the benefit of a full breath, filled with oxygen and nutrients. 

Both apneas and hypopneas are included in something called the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI). Your doctor uses the AHI index to rate the severity of your sleep apnea:

• 5-14 AHI events per hour: mild OSA
• 15-29 AHI events per hour: moderate OSA
• More than 30 AHI events per hour: severe OSA

Untreated, OSA robs your body — including your brain — of restorative sleep and oxygen. Severe OSA that goes untreated raises your risk for myocardial infarction by 2.6 times. It also increases your risk for stroke and dementia.

Why blood-oxygen levels are important

When you stop breathing during sleep, you deprive all of the tissues in your body of life-giving oxygen. A normal blood oxygen level while sleeping ranges from 96%-100%.

If you have OSA, however, your blood oxygen levels may fall into abnormal or dangerous categories. Patients with OSA may have a blood oxygen level of 88% or below. 

If your doctor tells you that you have low blood-oxygen according to your sleep test, they may recommend wearing a pulse oximeter. If you continue to have low oxygen levels while sleeping, your doctor may recommend further testing. 

Ways to treat OSA

If you only have mild OSA, lifestyle interventions could be enough to resolve your apneas. Anyone with sleep apnea could benefit from developing healthy habits, such as:

• Losing excess weight
• Getting more exercise
• Improving sleep hygiene

For mild OSA, you may also do well with an oral appliance that you wear while you sleep to help keep your airway open. Oral appliances have been shown to decrease the number of AHI events per night. However, it’s unclear whether they reduce symptoms, improve quality of life, or prevent complications.

The gold standard in treating OSA is a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine. This device continually delivers pressurized air into your airway as you sleep, through a mask you wear over your nose and mouth or through a nasal pillow pad.

In addition to reducing AHIs in moderate-to-severe OSA, CPAP improves problems such as daytime sleepiness and decreases blood pressure. It not only seems to prevent a future stroke, it improves patient outcomes after a stroke.

Don’t ignore snoring or daytime sleepiness, and don’t delay sleep apnea treatment. If you have OSA, contact the sleep medicine team at Advanced Medical Care today for personalized care.