Obstructed breathing affects many people while they’re sleeping

You wake up tired after a full night’s sleep. Maybe you’ve become a bit forgetful, and you struggle to stay awake at work or behind the wheel. The problem might be obstructive sleep apnea, an often overlooked condition that has increased sharply in the past 20 years.

In the United States, more than 40 percent of men and 28 percent of women between the ages of 50 and 70 experience obstructed breathing while asleep, according to researchers whose work was published online in April by the American Journal of Epidemiology. About 17 percent of the men and 9 percent of the women have cases serious enough to meet the Medicare criteria for a sleep apnea diagnosis. But even milder cases can affect your health.

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By Barry Krakow, M.D.
Maimonides Sleep Arts & Sciences
Albuquerque, NM

Objectives-- At the conclusion of this program, participants will be better able to:

• Examine new physiological evidence on the nature of sleeplessness alters evaluation and treatment approaches to chronic insomnia and mandates the use of polysomnography in a very large proportion of cases.
• Explain why prescription sedatives may be a premature step in the treatment of chronic insomnia, which in some cases delays comprehensive care.
• Review why co-morbid sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) is not only very common in treatment-seeking chronic insomnia patients, but also evidence to date suggests treatment of SDB decreases insomnia symptoms.

Tuesday, October 8th, 2013
Lunch at 11:30 a.m.
CME Program at 12:00 p.m.
Savage Auditorium - Presbyterian Hospital

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Commentary in GAMA Reports on healthcare reform most often begs the question, presuming solutions will emerge from government regulation and convoluted tinkering with current systems. Few writers delve into the role of the marketplace, the lack of competition in the insurance industry, and the advent of the 21st century healthcare patient, who is increasingly engaged in "participatory medicine" through a broad array of resources to pursue health education, decision-making, and therapeutic options in tandem with their physicians.