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| |  DG DISPATCH - ERS: Prevalence Of Obstructive Sleep Apnea High By Mark Pownall Special to DG News MADRID, SPAIN -- October 14, 1999 -- One in four men and women have been found to have clinical sleep disorders, according to the results of a large-scale study from northern Spain.
The study, from a team at the Txagorritxu Hospital, in the Basque city of Vitoria, led by Dr. Joaquin Duran, studied over 2000 men and women. The findings were presented yesterday at the European Respiratory Society meeting in Madrid, Spain. The group was selected to be a representative sample of the Vitoria population and found that 26 percent of men and 28 percent of women temporarily stopped breathing more than five times an hour. This frequency is the cut-off point that sleep experts regard as ‘abnormal’. The pauses last a long time. "What we call a respiratory pause is when a person stops breathing for at least ten seconds," Dr Duran explained. In addition, the survey found that nearly one in five men and one in seven women met the criteria for obstructive sleep apnea because they stopped breathing more than ten times an hour. The investigators visited the houses of the study population and used portable equipment to record sleep data at home including the concentration of oxygen in the blood, heartbeat, snoring and the position of the body. Those found to have unusual values at home, and also a sample of those with normal results, were asked to attend a sleep clinic for further tests. These included electroencephalography (EEG) the recording of eye and muscle movements and electrocardiography. Respiratory sensors and small throat microphones were used to measure the time when subjects stopped breathing. Respiratory pauses in sleep are usually due to the obstruction or collapse of tissues of the throat, and the effects of obstructive sleep apnea means those with the condition are often drowsy the next day. In the Vitoria study 14 percent of the men and 22 percent of the women said they felt sleepy three days a week or more. Dr. Duran said one New England Journal of Medicine survey found that those with obstructive sleep apnea were six times more likely than the general population to be the cause of a car accident.
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