New version of Free Money, Come and Get It!!

drbandage wrote:Why don't people know to request a simple "at home" ovenight sleep study? 'Tis not my area of expertise, I 'm just learning myself, but I know there are sleep strips, and other fairly cheap, simple tests besides the PSG.

Here's a thread from October in which home-based screening technology was discussed: viewtopic.php?t=14578&start=0

Bookwrm63 and gulfpearl, very cool, indeed!!!

Did you know . . .

According to the National Commission of Sleep Disorders Research:

38,000 cardiovascular deaths a year are directly attributable to sleep apnea.


A typical 747 airplane holds approximately 400 people.

38,000 cardiovascular deaths per year can be roughly visualized in lives lost by envisioning a doomed 747, filled to capacity, plowing nose first into the ground every Saturday, and every Sunday.
Every week.
Every month.
Every year.

R.I.P.

That is only the cardiovascular deaths.

This kind of reality can be quite effective when speaking to a radio talk show host, a columnist, or anyone else who thinks "not getting a good night's sleep" is at all trivial.

As a follow up to my previous post here, I had sent emails to 2 local radio stations and an email to a nurse who runs a newspaper column. The nurse emailed me back this am saying she was planning to do an article on Sleep Apnea and she would plan to do it during Sleep Awareness Week. She also asked to interview me in February for this column and if I had any recommendations for a local sleep specialist to meet with.

I am nowhere near as educated in sleep apnea info as you all are so I'd like some help please. What I would like to do is get your opinions on how to proceed. My thoughts would be to have those willing, email me a brief paragraph with a fact or two or a point they feel needs to be addressed. I would then collect all of these emails and give them to the nurse to collaborate for her column. The other thought would be to start a new thread for the same info and I can just print the pages up.

I really would love to get some advice and or/thoughts on how to proceed from the more experienced.

Thanks!

Mary

bookwrm63 wrote:As a follow up to my previous post here, I had sent emails to 2 local radio stations and an email to a nurse who runs a newspaper column. The nurse emailed me back this am saying she was planning to do an article on Sleep Apnea and she would plan to do it during Sleep Awareness Week. She also asked to interview me in February for this column and if I had any recommendations for a local sleep specialist to meet with.

I am nowhere near as educated in sleep apnea info as you all are so I'd like some help please. What I would like to do is get your opinions on how to proceed. My thoughts would be to have those willing, email me a brief paragraph with a fact or two or a point they feel needs to be addressed. I would then collect all of these emails and give them to the nurse to collaborate for her column. The other thought would be to start a new thread for the same info and I can just print the pages up.

I really would love to get some advice and or/thoughts on how to proceed from the more experienced.

Thanks!

Mary

Mary -
You are very inspirational and I am so glad to see you moving this forward in such a meaningful way!! You're saving lives, and I mean that quite literally. Hopefully, some others will have other ideas as well. I will certainly be able to help you with some of this, put I know others will want to pitch in as well!
Thanks for stepping up to the plate!!
drB

I have mentioned this in other threads but it's certainly relevant here.

The Berlin Questionnaire (click here for a link: http://www.ssc.ca/documents/case_studie ... p_BQ_e.pdf
consists of ten simple questions on one page. It is easily scored by any lay person (just follow the instructions--you can easily score it yourself).

This simple questionnaire has been proven to be highly predictive of people who are at high risk for OSA (something like 90% of people scoring at “high risk” from the questionnaire will test positive for OSA in a sleep lab).

I would hope that any media coverage would include references to the Berlin Questionnaire and invite people to take the assessment. If they score high, they should simply be able to take it to their doctor and go from there.

While home assessment tests would seem to be helpful, it strikes me that if someone just filled out this simple questionnaire and scored "high risk", that should be enough for their doctor to take the issue seriously.

And remember that recent studies have shown that one third of all men, and one fifth of all women in the USA are at "high risk" for OSA and the vast majority don't have any idea they have a sleeping problem. That's a statistic that needs some publicity!

Thank you SleepGuy! I will be sure to include that info and provide her with the Berlin Questionnaire.

I invite all the resident "experts" here to please add info here or PM a short blurb to me that I can try to have included in this newspaper column. Thanks all in advance for your assistance!

Mary

Here's a link to the article showing the latest statistical estimates of the prevalence of sleep apnea in the USA--It's a full 25% of all adults (one third of all men and one fifth of all women)! http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/reprint ... type=HWCIT

This analysis is the best of its kind to date and is based on the National Sleep Foundation's 2005 Sleep in America Poll and the Berlin Questionnaire.

This is precisely the kind of thing the media should really sink its teeth into. I mean we're talking about fifty or sixty million people out there who have sleep apnea and have no idea what's really going on. They are being treated for depression, hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, respiratory disease, and so forth and getting worse and worse. And it looks like their doctors are (for the most part) just as unaware of how prevalent this condition is!

So here are some additional sexy facts that any good reporter should find interesting (I posted this on the first version of this thread but apparently many people have not seen that one):

A study from Canada showed that OSA victims consume 23 to 50% more medical services in the five years prior to diagnosis than control subjects, with OSA victims being at higher risk for hypertension, congestive heart failure, cardiac arrhythmias, cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive airways disease, and depression. In a recent study from Israel, healthcare utilization was 1.7-fold higher by OSA patients compared to the control group, with the upper 25% of the most costly OSA patients accounting for 70% of the total healthcare expenditures.

The Canadian study can be found at: Smith, R, Ronald, J et al. (2002); What Are Obstructive Sleep Apnea Patients Being Treated for Prior to this Diagnosis?; Chest 2002;121:164-172

The study for Israel is: Tarasiuk, A, Greenberg-Dotan, S, et al. (2005); Determinants Affecting Health-Care Utilization in Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome Patients; Chest 2005;128;1310-1314

In light of these statistics, the cost to the US healthcare and insurance industries of undiagnosed/untreated OSA must be in the hundreds of millions annually.

The worst of it is that not only is the U.S. polulation bearing all of these costs (primarily through taxes that support public health services and employer-provided healthcare insurance) but that perhaps 40 or 50 million hard working, taxpaying adults in the US are suffering from OSA and its common co-morbid conditions and don't even know it because the entire healthcare system remains largely in denial about OSA and the importance of its diagnosis and treatment!

So I'd suggest that the news media stop spending so much time obsessing about public health non-issues (like avian flu and smallpox, which have yet to kill anyone) and focus on sleep disorders, where public and even physican awareness is seriously lacking and is costing our nation untold billions in direct and indirect medical costs, lost productivity, and serious quality of life issues for untold millions (not to mention the 38,000 people who die every year just from sleep apnea itself!).

I just want to say that several of the last posts have been just magnificent in their clarity, and please keep up the fight. Nobody is going to come riding to the rescue of people who are dying or flirting with death as long as people think sleepy is cuddly.

Are you sleeping with the enemy?
Sleepy can be Creepy: Get your Snore Score!

I had posted this before...but I wanted to post it again, as it is most relevant. I will be cured...it is a matter of time. I just wish more people were aware about how bad this is...and I am surprised but not at the fact of how many people I know that have it. I love how my health insurance essentially won't cover DME...yet supposedly they will cover the MMA I am about to have...

I hate sleep apnea.

I hate it for the way it makes me feel.

I hate it for making me tired.

I hate it for making me depressed.

I hate it for making me want to give up.

I hate it for inhibiting the things I want to do in life.

I hate it for the life changes I have had to make to try to adapt.

I hate it for giving me the capacity to hate.

I hate it for making me wonder if I love my wife.

I hate it for making me tired...and making that the "excuse".

I hate it for making excuses.

I hate it because I never know if the treatment is actually working.

I hate it for making me go through one surgery, and onto another.

I hate it because nothing else is wrong with me...and that's proven.

I hate it for not letting me cry.

I hate it for making me not want to work.

I hate it for making me sedentary.

I hate it for the fact I have something patent pending, and I'm too tired to work on it.

I hate it for making me feel aggression.

I hate it because it stops me from breathing.

I hate it because half the time I don't know what I'm doing.

I hate it because it hurts my teeth.

I hate it because I never ever feel rested.

I hate it because I cannot help with the baby at night.

I hate it because of the weird phlegm I wake up with in my mouth.

I hate it because of the complications with insurance.

I hate insurance.

I hate it because no one really "cares".

I hate it because my eyes always feel dry and heavy.

I hate it because it is so simple.

I hate it because it is making me go broke.

I hate it because no psychiatrist nor psychologist can help me.

I hate it because I know what the problem is.

I hate it because there is no medicine that will help me.

I hate it for the headaches.

I hate it for the fear of turning into my grandfather.

I hate it for changing me into someone I don't want to be.

I hate it because it limits me.

I hate it because I am a slave to it.

I hate sleep apnea.[/i]

Thank you Josh for your post. I know many here feel the same.

Good luck to you!

Mary

And on top of everything else, here's something that should be a headline-grabber when it comes to real public health issues:

Dr. Alex Sassini and others conducted a statistical analysis of the annual human and economic costs of untreated OSA just on US highway accidents.

The report, entitled "Reducing motor-vehicle collisions, costs, and fatalities by treating obstructive sleep apnea syndrome" was published in the journal Sleep in 2004 and concluded:

More than 800,000 drivers were involved in OSAS-related motor-vehicle collisions in the year 2000. These collisions cost 15.9 billion dollars and 1,400 lives in the year 2000. In the United States, treating all drivers suffering from OSAS with CPAP would cost 3.18 billion dollars, save 11.1 billion dollars in collision costs, and save 980 lives annually. CONCLUSION: Annually, a small but significant portion of motor-vehicle collisions, costs, and deaths are related to OSAS. With CPAP treatment, most of these collisions, costs, and deaths can be prevented. Treatment of OSAS benefits both the patient and the public.

It's worth pointing out that the life and cost savings presented here is just from reduction in highway accidents. The report did not attempt to quantify the other tremendous cost savings that would accrue if sleep apnea were more effectively treated, including medical treatment costs and deaths from apnea and co-morbid conditions, savings in worker productivity, etc. Those numbers would be astronomically high based on the other reports I posted on this thread.

Yet it looks like the cost savings in highway accidents by itself would be enough to cover all costs of treating sleep apnea and leave $11 billion "left over," not to mention saving 980 lives a year (just from traffic accidents).

When you put this all together, any experienced reporter should be able to craft a half dozen highly newsworthy articles out of this material--articles people might actually read!

Horrible night for me last night, as my latest "experiment" with Black Box tweaking backfired. Shoulda worked! But no. Thundering morning HA, so bad but occuring during my comatose phase, so I had no ability to get my HA pills. Alarm fires off, and I am now upright with thundering bad HA.
Check readout, lots of OA, dang.

This post perks me up considerably, though as I read some of the stuff people are adding to this thread. I applaud all you "root hackers". Plenty of "branch trimmers" to go around. Maybe we should have a Root Hacker award, sort of a shirt tail relative of the Lab Rat award.

Keep doing this, and keep saving lives.

Can't wait for lunch, so I can nap, altho no XPAP at work so . . . . never mind.

Best,

drB

Hang in there Dr.B We're all behind you!!!!

lvwildcat wrote:Hang in there Dr.B We're all behind you!!!!

I love this board.