The most wide spread method of OSA diagnosis is polysomnography during which the person has to stay at the laboratory for a full night in a special room created for sleep apnea tests (In my article “Sleep apnea testing” I discuss and describe a great deal about how it works). This method is very expensive as well as inconvenient and obviously is not possible to apply to large masses of peoples. Children also have more difficulties with this than adults.
However, THERE IS A BETTER WAY!
In 2009 a team of researchers lead by Dr Udantha Abeyratne have come to fantastic results. They have spent a huge amount of effort studying the sounds people make when they snore and they have discovered that they can do an OSA diagnosis / sleep apnea tests using ONLY snoring sounds.
Snoring Sounds As Obstructive Sleep Apnea Diagnosis!
They just record the sounds of your snoring while you sleep comfortably without 15+ things connected to you as in the case of polysomnography and they can make the full prognosis in a NON-INVASIVE way. Isn’t this very amazing? This is really great news for all those people who have to spend a great deal of money and effort going for overnight sleep apnea tests. A lot of people also stress very much about these tests and this is negatively impacting their quality of life and health. Recording the snoring sounds however is a technology very familiar to people and is not only very cheap but will hardly cause anybody to stress over.
Snoring – Early Symptom Of Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Remember, snoring is often an early symptom of OSA and practically all the people who suffer from sleep apnea snore. It could be said that the only difference between snoring and sleep apnea is the extent to which your air passages are blocked. If they are partly blocked then the air is still passing through and the vibration creates what we call snoring. And if they are fully blocked then you are unable to breathe and you have sleep apnea.
The techniques and methods developed by Dr Udantha Abeyratne and the team present a great opportunity in the battle against sleep apnea and help a lot of people who snore, through a non-invasive way, to find out if they have a bigger problem or not.
Their OSA diagnosis success rate is 90+%!
The team is also working on methods of testing the efficiency of CPAP devices which are often subscribed to patients suffering from OSA.
OSA diagnosis conclusion
Definitely check out this method of sleep apnea tests instead of polysomnography. It can very well be that your doctor does not even know about this and you have to educate him or her.
