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Plz somebody help!! I'm am 46 years old have early onset dementia and truly don't know what any of this means. My brain is good rn so I wanted to reach out I don't understand all this sleep apnea stuff I freak out. Ok don't understand the numbers. I see events and think the worst. Plz try 2 understand my issue ty
Apnea is when you stop breathing when you are sleeping. Any stop in the breathing of more than 10 seconds is considered an incident. Over a night of sleeping the total number of incidents is added up and divided by the hours of sleep. The apnea index represents the number of incidents per hour of sleep. 5 to 15 incidents per hour is considered mild apnea, and in most countries treatment is recommended. From 15-30 incidents is moderate apnea. And 30 or more is severe apnea. The objective of treatment with a CPAP is to reduce the incidence frequency to less than 5 per hour.
There are issues with the AHI measurement criteria, however.
The criteria are designed around men. Women and children will often have apneas or hypopneas that won’t be counted as such, because they will either not desaturate by 4% or the cessations in breathing will be shorter than ten seconds.
Accordingly, there are currently research projects looking into developing alternative measurement criteria based upon the impact on the heart during events.
Seems to me the big issue is undiagnosed and as a result untreated sleep apnea. Yes, the diagnosis and treatment standards may not be perfect, but any diagnosis and treatment is better than none.
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