People with Sleep Apnea have a high risk of death

A study was released in the Journal Sleep that showed that people with severe sleep apnea have a much higher mortality risk than people without sleep apnea.

From eScience News:

A study in the August 1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that people with severe sleep apnea have a much higher mortality risk than people without sleep apnea, and this risk increases when sleep apnea is untreated. Results show that people who have severe sleep apnea, which involves frequent breathing pauses during sleep, have three times the risk of dying due to any cause compared with people who do not have sleep apnea. This risk is represented by an adjusted hazard ratio of 3.2 after controlling for age, sex and body mass index. When 126 participants who reported regular use of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy were removed from the statistical analysis, the hazard ratio for all-cause mortality related to severe sleep apnea rose to 4.3.

"We found that both men and women with sleep apnea in the general population - not patients - mostly undiagnosed and untreated, had poorer survival compared with persons without sleep apnea, given equal BMI, age and sex," said principal investigator and lead author Terry Young, PhD, professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

According to Young, most previous studies of sleep apnea and mortality have involved patients referred for a clinical sleep diagnostic evaluation; the mortality risk for sleep apnea in the general population has not been previously reported.

This is serious business folks.

If you snore, have been observed to stop breathing and then gasp and choke while asleep, have high blood pressure and feel tired during the day SEE YOUR PHYSICIAN OR SLEEP MEDICINE DENTIST for an evaluation.

No joke - let's go a little further with a recommendation, if you snore loudly and regularly see a sleep medicine dentist or a physician - it's your life.

Dr. Barsh