Sleep Apnea Treatment

Ok. Long story, I had a sleep study in November of Last year in which my doctor never talked to me about it. Well anyways I have the paperwork here with me and I have Mild Sleep Apnea, and it say’s possibly hypoxemia. Let me tell u what my results say on my oxygen saturation:
Initial oxygen saturation was 98% with the lowest saturation reached being 70%. The mean oxygen saturation during sleep study was 89.5%. During 38% study of the study, her oxygen saturation was greater than 90%, during 60.8% of the study her oxygen saturation varied between 80-89%, and during 1.2% of the study her oxygen saturation varied between 70-79%. Her sleep efficiency was severely reduced to 63.1% with a decrease in the amount of REM sleep to 11% of total sleep and no deep sleep was noted. Her sleep onset latency was prolonged to 127 minutes and her REM onset latency was prolonged to 210 minutes. Ambien 10 mg was taken. Her combined apneic and partial apneic index was very mildly elevated at 5.7 with an apneic index of 2.0 and partial index of 5.5 .The vast majority of the esisodes were obstructive in type with the longest partial apneic episode being 16 seconds and the mean length being 11 seconds. The total study time was 6.5 hours and the total sleep was 4 hours. No arrhythmias are noted, no periodic limb movements are present, and snoring was moderately loud, intermittent and present.
His impression is Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and Hypoxemia
His recommendation for my doctor is this: (my doctor has never talked to me about this or done anything about it): I recommend supplemental oxygen for sleep at a flow rate of 2 liters per nasal cannula. I would recommend an overnight oximetry on supplemntal oxygen in two to three weeks and hopefully note normalization of her oxygen saturation. I also recommend weight loss of 25 pounds. Lastly I recommend an otolaryngology evaluation as in a 30 year old patient a possible surgical approach would be indicated. I will obtaining the home equipment and followup care to dr. phillips. I am not sure why her oxygen saturation remains low other than being overweight, but if appropriate, a cardiac and pulmonary evaluation would be in order.
Note by me the patient: I am having trouble breathing all the time and can’t sleep even on sleeping pills because I can’t breathe even worse when I lay down. Please let me know why my doctor hasn’t gotten in contact with me about these results. His nurses told me I’m fine, but I’m not so sure, This was the stupid nurse who doesn’t care about anyone.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 7:17 pm and is filed under Obstructive Sleep Apnea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.