Here's one interesting article co-authored by Dr. Christian Guilleminault, a world-renowned and pioneering researcher who coined the term UARS:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/494651
(HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING)
With that said, the mainstream medical community does not necessarily agree that a separate and unique health condition designated by the term UARS even exists.
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In this current thread, OutaSync cites this excerpt describing just how difficult the gold standard of UARS diagnosis can be to administer:
OutaSync wrote:In chapter four of the book, "Deadly Sleep", by Dr. Mack Jones, he says,
Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome (UARS)
I had been to a sleep seminar in St. Petersburg, FL where Dr. Christian Guilleminault, a highly respected sleep disorders expert from Stanford University, discussed his concept of a narrowed airway in which one inhales with extra effort (like trying to inhale through a straw) creating a much greater negative pressure in the chest than usual, (like minus ten to minus thirty cm H2O pressure or greater, when normal is minus five cm H2O pressure).
This, in turn results in a dramatic change in the flow of blood into and out of the heart, so much so, that in some cases the walls of the heart actually collapse. This can potentially cause sudden cardiac death. Dr. Guilleminault showed examples of this with echocardiograms in sleeping patients with UARS. The point was made that the "gold standard" for detecting UARS is an esophageal pressure monitor (Pes monitor). The pressure monitor is attached to the end of a small catheter, passed through the back of the nose and swallowed, positioned about half-way down the esophagus. It lies in the mid-esophagus during the PSG and measures the negative pressures in the chest as one inhales during the night.
Most sleep techs are not trained to insert these. Patients protest because it is uncomfortable and techs don't like to get their patients upset with them even before test begins. Therefore most sleep labs don't use them. Instead, they were using the unreliable nasal thermistors (heat detectors) for changes in air flow from the nose (more recently, nasal pressure transducers have proven more reliable for this purpose and most labs are using them).
If UARS is so deadly, why aren't more sleep centers testing for it?
