Device to diagnose sleep apnea at home in the works
By The Canadian Press
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From ctv.ca
May 22
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TORONTO — When Kathy Donkner was diagnosed with sleep apnea, she spent several nights in a sleep lab, hooked to scores of electrodes tying her to a device that gathered data about her breathing and sleep patterns.
The procedure didn't make for the most comfortable of nights, she acknowledges. Getting up to go to the bathroom, for instance, was an ordeal that involved calling for help to unplug herself from the monitor collecting her sleep data.
"You can't just get up and go, right? You feel like a little kid asking for permission to go to the bathroom," she says with a chuckle.
So Donkner can appreciate the appeal of being tested for sleep apnea in her own home, with a device that wouldn't require electrodes and belts and cameras monitoring her every nocturnal toss and turn.
"I think a lot more people would actually go and be tested for it, if they didn't have to go through the nonsense that you have to do when you have to go to the sleep clinic," says Donkner, 48, an early childhood educator from the Toronto area.
Scientists at Toronto Rehab, a treatment and research hospital, are working on just such a diagnostic system for sleep apnea, a condition where breathing is disrupted during sleep.
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Comments (1 comment)
Add your commentWhen I was first diagnosed with sleep apnea in England, it was done in a very similar method as described here. That was in 2008, there was a small, I guess microphone attached with tape to just below my nose and a clip on my index finger these were connected to a monitoring box. At the end of the night I just removed everything packaged it & sent it back to the lab. I was diagnosed with the level of severe sleep apnea. When I returned to the states, interestingly they did not believe that method was worthwhile & insisted on the more expensive & uncomfortable over night sleep lab. The resulting findings, were EXACTLY the same as the simple cheaper one done in England. I do not believe in re-inventing the wheel! So if anyone wants to know more contact the Sleep Lab at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford England.