睡眠時無呼吸症候群の診断

Abstract

For diagnosis of sleep apnea syndrome (SAS), there are three important steps wihch we have to consider. As the first step, we have to derive the following clinical symptoms from repeated questioning of patients and their families, for example, snoring, morning headache, daytime sleepiness, general fatigue, dyspnea, abnormal behavior during sleep or nocturnal enuresis, etc. Furthermore, we have to consider background diseases and complications. As the second step, it is necessary to take a screening test for patients, who are thought to have breathing disorders of sleep. We have developed a home sleep monitoring system which is very useful for a screening test. Home sleep monitor is consisted of two thermisters for mouth and nasal flow, a microphone for tracheal sound, three electrodes for electrocardiogram, amplifiers and microcomputer. The weight of this device is 280g. This device is equipped just before patient goes to bed, and brought back to hospital on the following day. Data such as trend display of apnea episodes, histogram of apnea episodes or trend display of heart rate are analyzed by a personal computer. As the third step, patient who is suspected of SAS by a screening test needs polysomnography to get correct diagnosis for SAS after admission to hospital. By polysomnography, we can obtain the informations of sleep stage, apnea type, degree of desaturation or hemodynamics during sleep.