Institute for Continuing Education

Sleep Apnea

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:

• Screen patients for obstructive sleep apnea.
• Make proper referrals to sleep disorder centers.
• Communicate with sleep disorder centers.

Course Information

A surprisingly large number of individuals suffer from the objectionable problem of excessive snoring. Many of these people also have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a medical condition with direct relationship to cardiac arrhythmia and other serious medically related problems. An important note about this course: this is a review course, and as a result it takes material from a variety of points of view. Be aware that this may result in some repetition of coverage and phraseology.

Sleep apnea, also called obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), is a common disorder that affects more than 18 million people in the United States. In many of these people, the condition is undiagnosed. OSA takes its name from the Greek word apnea, which means “without breath.” People with sleep apnea literally stop breathing repeatedly during their sleep, often for a minute or longer and as many as hundreds of times during a single night.

Sleep apnea can be caused by either complete obstruction of the airway (obstructive apnea) or partial obstruction (obstructive hypopnea—hypopnea is slow, shallow breathing), both of which can wake one up. There are three types of sleep apnea—obstructive, central, and mixed. Of these, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is the most common. OSA occurs in approximately two percent of women and four percent of men over the age of 35.