Find out more about why this common sleep disorder happens and how it s treated. Sleep apnea also spelled sleep apnoea is a sleep disorder where a person has pauses in breathing or periods of shallow breathing during sleep.
It is increasingly recognized as an independent risk factor for cardiac neurologic and perioperative morbidities.
Definition of obstructive sleep apnea. Each pause can last for a few seconds to a few minutes and they happen many times a night. Obstructive sleep apnea osa is a sleep related breathing disorder that involves a decrease or complete halt in airflow despite an ongoing effort to breathe. In the most common form this follows loud snoring.
Sleep apnea definition is apnea that recurs during sleep and is caused especially by obstruction of the airway or a disturbance in the brain s respiratory center. Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the muscles in the back of your throat relax too much to allow normal breathing. These muscles support structures including the back of the roof of your mouth soft palate the triangular piece of tissue hanging from the soft palate uvula the tonsils and the tongue.
It occurs when the muscles relax during sleep causing soft tissue in the back of the throat to collapse and block the upper airway. Sleep apnea that is caused by recurring interruption of breathing during sleep due to obstruction usually of the upper airway especially by weak redundant or malformed pharyngeal tissues that occurs chiefly in overweight middle aged and elderly individuals and that results in hypoxemia and frequent arousals during the night and in excessive. Obstructive sleep apnea osa is the most common type of sleep apnea and is characterized by repeated episodes of complete or partial obstructions of the upper airway during sleep despite the effort to breathe and is usually associated with a reduction in blood oxygen saturation in the obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome the episodes of decreased breathing are called hypopnea and.
Sleep apnea is a major though often unrecognized cause of daytime sleepiness. It can have serious negative effects on a person s quality of life and is thought to be considerably underdiagnosed in the united states. Obstructive sleep apnea is the most common type of apnea.
Adult sleep apnea frequent and prolonged. Sleep apnea definition sleep apnea is a condition in which breathing stops for more than ten seconds during sleep. Medical definition of obstructive sleep apnea.
Obstructive sleep apnea osa is a breathing disorder during sleep that has implications beyond disrupted sleep. Yet this disorder remains undiagnosed in a substantial portion of our population. The most common type is adult sleep apnea.
Obstructive sleep apnea. Ap ne ah cessation of breathing especially during sleep. Central apnea in which there is failure of the central nervous system drive to respiration sometimes occurs in infants younger than 40 weeks after the date of conception.
There may be a choking or snorting sound as breathing resumes.
