Sleep Clinic For Sleep Apnea
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
I f you think you may have a sleep apnea, your primary doctor or a doctor that specializes in sleep apnea may send you to a sleep clinic for diagnosis. There are many sleep clinics located across the United States and their numbers are increasing. Those in the United States must be accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
When a person goes to a sleep clinic, it is usually for an overnight stay. The costs involved for the sleep study tests are not cheap, mostly range from one to three thousand dollars and many need to be repeated twice. The first visit to diagnose the sleep apnea and the second to get accurate settings for any PAP machines that may be needed. Health insurance generally pays all or most of the cost of the tests needed to diagnose a sleep apnea.
As soon as an appointment has been made, many sleep clinics will send a sleep diary to the patient. The doctors uses a sleep diary to understand the general sleeping patterns. It will be best not to have any caffeine or alcohol after 12:00 p.m. on the day when you are having the test.
Usually the patient have to pack an overnight bag as if they were going to stay at a hotel overnight. You wear your own nightclothes during the sleep study and the best part is you can use your favorite pillow from home. If you like to read before falling to sleep, bring a book or magazine. They are like a hotel room and have a television to watch if that is what the patient usually does before going to sleep at home. Once you are relaxed the sleep clinic technician starts preparation for the equipment needed to record your patterns of sleep.
Polysomnography is used to diagnose to record a continual record of your sleep. Slightly more than two dozen small thin electrodes are pasted to specific parts of your body in order to take a specific reading . They are posited under your chin, on your scalp, near your eyes and nose, on your finger, chest and legs, and also over the rib muscles and on the abdomen, you might feel funny but you have to patient. Various types of readings are recorded by these electrodes during the night. Sleep noises and movement are often monitored by an audio and video tape.
Once all the equipment is in place the sleep technician will leave you alone to fall asleep. Bear in mind all the equipment is not uncomfortable. However it is easy to move or turn onto your side. Each bedroom in a sleep clinic also has an automatic intercom so it is easy to call the technician if needed for such things as a bathroom break. The technician may only wake you when the sleep study is completed, . Most studies that are used to diagnose a sleep apnea take seven to eight hours.
The reading are collected on a computer file called a polysonagram and are monitored and analyzed by the sleep technician during the night at the sleep clinic . The results are then sent for further readings to determine if there is a sleep apnea.
Although a sleep study may not sound comfortable, it is very important to determine and treat any sleep apnea.
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