Sleep apnea syndrome therapy
Primarily, the reduction of body weight (diet) serves to lower blood pressure in sleep apnea syndrome and the breathing pauses during sleep itself: Weight loss leads to a reduction in the severity of the disease. Patients may prefer a lateral position for sleeping in order to achieve better breathing. Abstaining from alcohol, smoking and certain drugs that promote apnea (e.g. tranquilizers or sleeping pills) can lead to better sleep.
The sleep apnea syndrome patients should pay attention to good sleep hygiene, i.e. have a regular sleep rhythm and avoid strenuous activities or fatty food before going to bed. If there is no significant improvement in the nightly breathing stops, the patient with sleep apnea syndrome can be helped during sleep with a so-called CPAP treatment. CPAP stands for “Continuous positive airway pressure”, i.e. “constant positive airway resistance”.
The CPAP treatment proceeds as follows: The patient wears a mask over the nose or even over the mouth for therapy while sleeping. The mask is pressed onto the nose or nose and mouth using head straps. The mask is connected to a device that generates positive pressure so that continuous pressure is applied to the patient’s airways via the mask.
This pressure serves to keep the airways open. Without the therapy, the airways would slacken in the region of the throat, so that less oxygenated air per breath reaches the lungs. This method can be used very effectively to eliminate respiratory instability and at the same time leads to an improvement in the quality of life, restful night’s sleep, reduced daytime tiredness and a reduction in blood pressure.
The patient with sleep apnea syndrome should wear the mask regularly at night in order to achieve an improvement of the symptoms. Treatment monitoring is carried out at regular intervals: The patient is monitored in the sleep laboratory during CPAP ventilation to check the success of the therapy with this method. The patient should benefit from the sleep apnea syndrome therapy and experience an improvement of the symptoms! If the patient has nasal polyps or an inclined nasal septum, these breathing obstacles in the upper airways can be removed by surgery, which leads to an improvement in breathing during sleep.
