Sleep Apnea Test Results

Sleep Apnea scoring. Okay, so now you've had your sleep study, and they gave you some numbers, they told you, gee, this is what you have you have sleep apnea, or to get a trade it, okay? But they, you're not really sure what the scores mean. Okay, they gave you some numbers, they told you it's mild, moderate, severe, where they didn't, they just said, Get let's start treatment for your okay. So what, when you get tested, like the measure account, the number of times, you stopped breathing every hour, for 10 seconds or more. That's called an apneic event, they count the number of APNIC events. There's also something called a hypopnea. Okay, and these are, this is when you stop breathing 80% for 10 seconds or more. Okay, the number of times this occurs, is considered your score. Okay.

And if it happens five to 15 times every hour, it's called mild sleep apnea. If it happens 15 to 30 times per hour. It's called moderate sleep apnea, over 30 times an hour, it's considered severe sleep apnea. Now, the results of the study, and the ahi scores are going to dictate or may dictate what type of therapy is going to be recommended, the more severe, the more likely, you're going to be spoken to about a CPAP machine, possibly surgery called Inspire. Okay, and considered appropriate for mild to moderate sleep apnea is an oral appliance. And the oral appliance is also appropriate for somebody who cannot or will not use a CPAP machine. Believe it or not, there's some people who won't use it, but they get tired of using it, and then ends up being returned to the DME company who provided it, or it ends up in the closet or under the bed collecting dust. And oftentimes, the doctor doesn't even know that just stopped your treatment. Okay, so you want to make sure that you understand the severity of your sleep apnea, and the recommended treatments for it.

And this is a discussion you should have with the board certified sleep doc who did the sleep study in the first place. They'll take into consideration your medical history, what comorbidities there are and will take into consideration your general health and whether or not you would be best served by any of those three types of treatments that we just mentioned. We also measure the oxygen levels as they drop and rise all night long. We want to see how many times you fall below 90% oxygen saturation and how many times it goes under 90 per hour. And we get what's called an oxygen D saturation index. Okay, and it may not sound like much to you, okay when you hear these numbers, but it's important for the physician who's diagnosing and the physician who's treating to know where we start, and where we need to end up, we want to end up with below, five or below. Okay, now of course, if you come in with an ad ahi and you're super severe 80 to 100. We may not get you down to five, but we'll consider it a success. If we can get you down at least 50% you're well on your way to a healthier situation than when you were 80 to 100 on your score. And then you'll start to do other things hopefully with lifestyle and and sleep hygiene that may bring your numbers down a little lower. We're agile other adjunctive therapies that we'll get into in another elsewhere.