Sleep apnea is a condition which it has been hard to test for without a large amount of rather cumbersome sensory equipment. This, in itself, can make for a rather uncomfortable sleeping experience0 I don’t know about you, but I can imagine my sleep might well be a little disturbed if I was going to bed with a bunch of electrodes strapped onto my body!
This understandable increase in patient anxiety, and bodily tension, can lead to some distortion of the results received by the traditional method. It can also discourage some people from participation- they simply don’t want to go through the whole rigmarole of being wired up and tested.
This is why Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center have been attempting to get around this, and ‘unwire’ their patients, thus letting them get better sleep. They have developed a newer test, based around thermal imaging, which appears to be just as effective as the previous method.
The way the new test works is that instead of attaching a series of wires to the patient (a process known as Polysomnography), a thermal camera is put in place, which takes an infrared image of the airflow around the patient’s nose and mouth. This can then capture the interruptions and changes to the patient’s normal breathing pattern. This is then subjected to computer analysis.
It also seems to be giving researchers a greater depth of information-” in contrast to the traditional one-dimensional methods, this method is multi-dimension” says Ioannis Pavlidis, one of the creators of the study. By this, he means that they can build up a three-dimensional picture of the way air is flowing through a patient’s system. Pavlidis notes that it “makes a lot of difference when it comes to appreciating subtle pathology,” mainly because for the first time researchers are actually getting a three-dimensional picture of the patient’s respiratory system in real time.
Further studies are to follow, but this looks like a very good step forward- anything which encourages people to seek out a diagnosis, and makes obtaining correct information an easier process, is bound to be a good thing. It may also lead to further insights and improvements in customised sleep apnea products. This can only be a good thing!
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