Home Sleep Apnea Testing Free Important Information
Sleep apnea is a disorder which causes you to stop respiring while you’re trying to sleep. There are various different types and while they’re not ordinarily life threatening there are particular circumstances where there could be serious health outcomes and expose you to life threatening hazards. it is of great relevance to get a sleep apnea examination if you have an inkling that you’re hurting from this sleep disorder.
Several methods are available for determining if you are suffering from sleep apnea, and many who have sleep apnea also have a number of other symptoms in which sleep apnea is a side effect. Some good examples of this are ,fatigue, gaining weight, and mental tiredness all of which are aggravated by sleep apnea, and they also might have dry mouth or a sudden panic attack upon waking up.
You may experience insomnia along with your sleep disorder but the only way to know if your symptoms are being caused by sleep apnea or are perhaps the cause of your sleep apnea is to take a sleep apnea test. This test is usually administered at a center for sleep disorders but can be given in a doctor’s office where overnight facilities are available.
You’ll need to take a physical exam which consists of an examination of the throat, the nose, the uvula and the palate. There will also be a detailed recording an interview with questions showing your sleep quality, sleep patterns and feelings about how well you are sleeping. The doctors will want to have you sleep with them overnight where a record is kept of how well you sleep.
The common test to record your sleep patterns is going to be a PSG which stands for a polysomnogram which comes in two varieties. The first type of test is the overnight sleep test and is comprised of monitoring several activities including breathing patterns, heart rate, blood oxygen level, eye movement and brain activity.
The second testing type involves a home monitoring version where the technician simply connects the necessary electrodes and makes it easy to monitor the patient while they are at home using a PSG. What the doctors are looking for when deciding whether the results of the test are good or bad is a factor called the RDI or respiratory disturbance index.
This method expresses in data form the number of times you experience a negative breathing pattern which occurred in breathing over the course of the test. The following values are usually used when deciding if someone has a sleep apnea issue. If the number of captured events over the period of an hour is higher than twenty then the patient is diagnosed with some form of sleep apnea.
There are additional tests which could be called for like a multiple sleep latency examination which assesses the amount of fatigue which is caused by the lack of restful sleep. Normally, a person requires roughly 10 minutes to fall into a restful sleep so individuals who can fall asleep in less than five minutes are usually recommended for treatment. A strip test can also be administered in front of the sleep apnea exam in order to see of further testing is needed.