Last Days TV show- "rare" apnea - 3 yrs to live ???

Anyone watch that show ? Anyone ever heard of doctors telling apnea patients how much time they have left to live ? I hadn't.....until I saw this "My Last Days" TV show. Sounds like hyped up, sensationalist BS to me. ~~~~ http://www.bustle.com/articles/179440-w ... nt-give-up.

If somebody with OSA refuses to wear cpap, maybe give then a countown timer, as a hint.

Gasper62 wrote:Anyone watch that show ? Anyone ever heard of doctors telling apnea patients how much time they have left to live ? I hadn't.....until I saw this "My Last Days" TV show. Sounds like hyped up, sensationalist BS to me. ~~~~ http://www.bustle.com/articles/179440-w ... nt-give-up.

Wow, a T. V. Show , taken for real life. Jim

Sounds like BS.

"stops breathing up to 100 times a night..."

I stopped breathing 101 times an hour during my sleep study. With CPAP I'm down to less than 1 episode per hour.

I was never told I was going to "die"; just that it is going to take a toll on my health and I needed a CPAP as soon as possible.

An old journalism proverb: If it bleeds it leads. IOW, sensationalism sells.

It says he was told he needed surgery to keep his airway open, and declined the treatment.

So the show's idiot writers would have pronounced us all DOOMED.

chunkyfrog wrote:So the show's idiot writers would have pronounced us all DOOMED.

well, you know, sleep apnea is a fatal disease, no, wait, that's life... life is a fatal disease.

My first thought is that a non medical writer made a poor attempt at a synopsis of a more complex medical situation. The fact that the surgery recommended was a tracheostomy says this is not the usual case of sleep apnea. I can think of several conditions where a trach in some cases could be the preferred treatment and the diagnosis (possibly secondary) indeed could be life threatening. Some things that come to mind... laryngeal/bronchial malacia, vocal cord dysfunction, obesity hypoventilation syndrome, neuromuscular disorders like Multiple Systems Atrophy, and other various compromises of airway and lung function. Sometimes the apnea isn't only during sleep, in which case a person's possibly severe events would continue unmitigated throughout the day if treated only at night.

Hopefully the show was more informative than the article.