Studies of the associations between sleep apnea and heart disease in large communities of individuals provide strong evidence that untreated sleep apnea increases the risk of developing high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, heart failure, stroke and premature death. There are known physiological mechanisms to explain how sleep apnea increases heart disease risk, which include injury of blood vessels and the heart muscle. Keep reading
In a recent study, my colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Columbia University and Baylor Medical Center and I found that older women are at higher relative risk of developing sleep apnea-related heart disease than older men. This study turns on its head the notion that sleep apnea is a “man’s” disease- that is, traditional thinking that men are both more likely to have sleep apnea and have sleep apnea-related health problems. Keep reading
Over the years, my colleagues and I have had requests to prescribe oxygen for treating sleep apnea in patients who do not tolerate CPAP. This made some sense since some of the complications of sleep apnea are driven by a lack of oxygen during periods of apnea. However, there has been little research addressing the role of oxygen as a sleep apnea treatment. We therefore designed the Heart Biomarker Evaluation in Apnea Treatment (HeartBEAT) study. Keep reading
