What is a Sleep Apnea Test?

Written by Fred McConnell

Sleep apnea is a most common sleeping disorder where a patient stops breathing during sleep. As you don't get to know about the stopped breathing issue, the waking symptoms can be helpful in knowing if you have obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. Headache, dry throat and grogginess are some effects of the disorder, which makes it necessary for you to visit a physician.

Most of the times either your friends or family members report the problem. Loud and excessive snoring are the symptoms of the disease. You should not take these symptoms lightly because the problem can lead to a life threatening hypertension and cardiovascular disease. For sleep apnea diagnosis, you have to take a test.

Polysomnography is the optimal sleep apnea test that is performed in the sleep lab. In this test the patient is observed overnight when he is sleeping, the sleep state, heart rate, breathing, eye movement, muscle activity and blood oxygen levels are monitored.

During a rapid eye moment sleep in a normal adult, the muscles of the throat and neck are in a relaxed position that allows the tongue and soft palate to rest. But, in case of sleep apnea, the relaxation of tissues reaches to a point where the airway gets reduced or sometimes blocked. Some other sleep apnea symptoms involve dropping down of level of blood oxygen, the brain arouses the body to breathe and as a result you wake up after short periods of sleep. Breathless episodes during the sleep are called apnea events.

With the sleep apnea test you can find out the number of breathless episodes, the lasting time of each event, blood oxygen level, snoring, percentage of sleep spent in the random eye movement and other symptoms. This helps the doctor in knowing the severity of the symptom and the best diagnosis for it.

By doing a sleep apnea test through PSG in a sleep lab, you can find out many things about the disorder. But, it has its drawbacks on the other hand. First of all, you have to sleep in an unfamiliar environment. Secondly, multiple wires connected to multiple monitors are attached to your body. The last thing is that they’re many people watching the patient. There are chances that you might not be able to sleep because of all this.

In order to reduce the awkwardness, a similar type of test can also be performed at home. There is another type of PSG where the heart rate is recorded, the movement of air going in and out of the lungs is seen, blood oxygen level is found and the effort put in by the patient to sleep is also seen. For this type of test, your technician will come to your house and hook you to electrodes. You will go to sleep and the technician will come back in the morning to get the result, which is then sent to the physician.

The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has recently approved another sleep apnea test system called Watch_PAT 100. In this test a fingertip probe and wearable wrist unit are placed on the finger and wrist of the patient before he goes to bed. When you are sleeping, the system will measure the blood oxygen saturation level, changes in the blood flow and the pulse rate. All these signals automatically get recorded in a memory card that is removed by the physician and downloaded to a computer.

The home sleep apnea test is not meant for everyone.

The AASM approves people to take the test who meet the following criteria:

Your age should be between 18 years to 65 years. Children and elderly people are not allowed.
You should have a medium to critical sleep apnea for falling into the high-risk category. It means breathing pauses while sleeping should be recorded, severely overweight, loud snoring and extreme sleepiness in daytime.
You should not have a major medical problem like a lung disease or a congestive heart failure record in the past.
You should not be diagnosed with insomnia sleep apnea, central sleep apnea, narcolepsy and circadian rhythm sleep.
A home strip is also available now a day, which is a mini-computer. It will record your airflow period through the nose and mouth. The device also tells the doctor if you have sleep apnea or how severe it is. You can easily use the strip with a little training.

Home test can be a little expensive in comparison to a sleep test done in the clinic. If you don't want others to observe you while sleeping, then a home test is the right choice for you. Till the time you meet the criteria, there is absolutely no problem in taking the insomnia sleep apnea test at home.