Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

General Discussion on any topic relating to CPAP and/or Sleep Apnea.
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jnk...
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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by jnk... » Mon Feb 05, 2018 7:13 pm

Trick question. OSA is a syndrome. An apnea is an event. Both range from very mild to very deadly.

Sleepy people often die in accidents, and few things put extreme stress on the heart like the sudden combination of the struggle to breathe against an obstuction that is quickly followed by being jarred awake by stress hormones. But in most of the cases of deaths related to those factors, the deaths will not officially be attributed on paper either to the syndrome or to the event itself, for two primary reasons: (1) It sounds silly to medical people to say a death was caused by a failure to breathe and (2) syndromes are generally not considered to be distinctly defined standalone disease states in and of themselves.

The same situation arises with well-known killer diseases. For example: Does type 2 diabetes kill? Yes. Often. By someone's being witnessed as "succumbing to an acute diabetes attack"? Not usually, no. That's not a usual written cause of death. But that's not the point, is it. There are causes and then deeper causes along with the direct causes. Same with OSA and associated events.

In my opinion. And I do have them.
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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by Holden4th » Tue Feb 06, 2018 3:03 am

The need for "an exact cause of death" has covered up many health issues in the past that have subsequently been shown to be the major factor in mortality rates.

Exact causes of 'natural' death are few in number. The three main ones are: cardiac arrest, respiratory failure and exsanguination (bleeding out from an arterial rupture). What caused those natural deaths in the first place is secondary to the main diagnosis. For example, extreme emphysema lead to my mothers respiratory failure. What lead to that failure is a story in itself and as you've probably guessed she was a heavy smoker. That would not have been mentioned in the medical report. She simply stopped breathing because her lung capacity was compromised to such an extent that efficient oxygen exchange was not possible.

Maybe we need a deeper approach when deciding on the factors leading to death - beyond the obvious.

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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by Biguugly » Tue Feb 06, 2018 9:32 am

I'm going to rephrase the question. Has anyone ever known of a person dying in his sleep due to the collapse of the soft palate or something else blocking their airway, not allowing them to breathe, thereby causing their death? Thanks.

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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by jnk... » Tue Feb 06, 2018 10:23 am

Biguugly wrote:. . . Has anyone ever known of a person dying in his sleep due to the collapse of the soft palate or something else blocking their airway, not allowing them to breathe, thereby causing their death? Thanks.
The majority of all non-sudden deaths fit that exact description. Death generally involves labored breathing and a blocked airway during a form of sleep. So, yes, absolutely, nearly always for every death for nearly every person who has ever died throughout history on this planet. With the possible exception of gunshots to the heart and beheadings, depending on how you look at it.
"Interrupted breathing . . . may occur and for some there may be noisy breathing sometimes called “the death rattle" . . . The pauses are referred to as “periods of apnea.” The person is now unconscious and unresponsive. . . . Breathing may stop before the heart stops. All the muscles of the body completely relax. . . . Death has now occurred." -- http://www.hospicepeterborough.org/wp-c ... e-2010.pdf
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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by D.H. » Tue Feb 06, 2018 10:36 am

There is a theory that SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) is a form of Sleep Apnea. That is a child under one year of age stops breathing and doesn't have the physical maturity to wake up to breathe.

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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by Biguugly » Tue Feb 06, 2018 10:45 am

D.H. wrote:There is a theory that SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) is a form of Sleep Apnea. That is a child under one year of age stops breathing and doesn't have the physical maturity to wake up to breathe.


So, to put this to rest, a normal healthy person with sleep apnea would , upon prolonged lack of breathing, awaken and put up enough of a struggle to reopen the airway, giving the lungs the oxygen they were deprived of, and hopefully with a happy ending. Thanks for the info on SIDS. I was completely unaware of that, and have great grandkids on the way.

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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by jnk... » Tue Feb 06, 2018 10:55 am

Biguugly wrote: So, to put this to rest, . . .
:lol: Now THAT's funny!
Biguugly wrote: . . . a normal healthy person with sleep apnea
There is no such thing. Untreated moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea is, by definition, not something normal and not something healthy.
Biguugly wrote: . . . upon prolonged lack of breathing, awaken and put up enough of a struggle to reopen the airway, giving the lungs the oxygen they were deprived of, and hopefully with a happy ending. . . .
That is only what happens until it doesn't. Sometimes there is a happy ending, and sometimes there is just, um, an ending.

A body needs four things to live: air, water, food, and sleep. Moderate-to-severe OSA destroys two out of the four, and it will eventually lead to death if those are not restored. PAP does that. People should use it and live. And then they can all rest assured that they won't succumb to an apnea before their time. And their great-grandkids will thank them.
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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by Biguugly » Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:05 am

I use and I'll live. You obviously didn't read my response to Wuffman.

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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by jnk... » Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:06 am

I adjusted it. Sorry about that. I tend to get over-zealous about all this stuff. I'm working on that.

Great topic. Thanks for posting it. Even if I got carried away. It just reminded me of one of the most common excuses I have heard people use for not treating their condition. People claim that no one ever dies from an apnea, when in reality, everyone actually eventually dies from an apnea, and so-called causes of death don't disprove that fact.
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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by Soothest Sleep » Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:25 am

You could google "death by suffocation apnea" or search the Pubmed Central database at NCBI for reports.

Here are a few items I found:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29402&st=0&sk=t&sd=a, a discussion here on the forum
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23865847, note the opening sentence of the abstract.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12935464
https://books.google.ca/books?id=9XzBLv ... &q&f=false, and scroll to page 87
http://thorax.bmj.com/content/58/4/369
https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-d ... -in-a-year

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Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine
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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by jnk... » Tue Feb 06, 2018 1:52 pm

Persons with obstructive sleep apnea have a significantly increased risk of sudden death from cardiac causes during the sleeping hours, which is in striking contrast to . . . persons without obstructive sleep apnea and in the general population. . . . The severity of obstructive sleep apnea correlated directly with the risk of nocturnal sudden death from cardiac causes, such that the relative risk of sudden death from cardiac causes during the sleeping hours was 40 percent higher in persons with severe obstructive sleep apnea (apnea–hypopnea index, ≥40) than in those with mild-to-moderate obstructive sleep apnea (apnea–hypopnea index, 5 to 39). . . . Obstructive sleep apnea may be implicated in some of the 16 percent of cases of sudden death from cardiac causes that occur between midnight and 6 a.m. in the general population, since obstructive sleep apnea . . . remains undiagnosed in the vast majority of these people. . . . Multiple pathophysiological mechanisms occur during sleep in persons with obstructive sleep apnea and may explain an increased risk of nocturnal sudden death from cardiac causes. -- "Day–Night Pattern of Sudden Death in Obstructive Sleep Apnea," Apoor S. Gami, M.D., Daniel E. Howard, B.S., Eric J. Olson, M.D., and Virend K. Somers, M.D., Ph.D.; March 24, 2005. N Engl J Med 2005; 352:1206-1214 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa041832 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa041832
Obstructive sleep apnea is common and linked to many medical problems. One common problem you may not be aware of is sudden cardiac arrest. When you have obstructive sleep apnea, “not only are you likely to wake up with a headache and fall asleep during the day, but you’re also at risk of dying suddenly,” says cardiologist Bruce Wilkoff, MD. -- June 30, 2017. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/2017 ... iac-death/
Malcolm Kohler, a senior consultant at the Sleep Disorders Center and Pulmonary Division of the University Hospital in Zurich, said at the time that the findings show that taking a break from the [CPAP] machine can lead to the return of symptoms within the first night. That, Kohler emphasized, is "strongly suggesting that [obstructive sleep apnea] patients should bring along their CPAP machines on holiday." -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to- ... dangerous/
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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by D.H. » Tue Feb 06, 2018 3:37 pm

Dying of Sleep Apnea is like dying of smoking. It's rare to die directly from the toxicity of "that last cigarette."

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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by palerider » Tue Feb 06, 2018 4:49 pm

Biguugly wrote:
. wrote:There is a theory that SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) is a form of Sleep Apnea. That is a child under one year of age stops breathing and doesn't have the physical maturity to wake up to breathe.


So, to put this to rest, a normal healthy person with sleep apnea would , upon prolonged lack of breathing, awaken and put up enough of a struggle to reopen the airway, giving the lungs the oxygen they were deprived of, and hopefully with a happy ending. Thanks for the info on SIDS. I was completely unaware of that, and have great grandkids on the way.
The latest thing I heard was that SIDS is caused by co2 pooling, co2 is a bit heavier than air, and the very soft respiration of a baby isn't enough to stir up the air in a still room, so it can puddle in blankets and the depression in a mattress... hence the "back to sleep" thing, which keeps their nose up above the co2... alternatively, put a ceiling fan in the babies room to stir up the air a bit.

http://cjfirstcandle.org/wp-content/upl ... ioxide.pdf
http://pulse.seattlechildrens.org/new-s ... tant-role/

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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by chunkyfrog » Tue Feb 06, 2018 5:28 pm

SIDS, as I understand, was a trigger in recognizing apnea.

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Re: Has Anyone Ever Succunbed To Apnea?

Post by 7200 » Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:35 am

Millions of people have apnea. Only 10,000 a year die of it. This doesn’t count heart attacks and stoke victim who survive.