REUTERS ARTICLE

This was a Reuters article on this mornings web news.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090818/sc_ ... leep_death

Unfortunately, this is not news ... we have known this for a long time.

And even worse, making statement like "The best treatment for sleep apnea is weight loss." Followed by "However, the most successful treatment can be a nasal CPAP ... ".

Weight loss may help but when a patient is faced with such a decision what do you think they will opt for? And we all know how successful humans are at weight loss.

Why don't they just come out and say? ... OSA patients MUST use CPAP if they want to reduce their risk to death.

I'm just glad I'm safe now. I know I may have had an MI by now if I hadn't gotten help. I am SO glad when my BP comes in at a totally normal level now

I do my part to try and raise awareness at work, too. Got the ASAA brochures brought in to the nurses stations.

Or ...

Perhaps they should say ... CPAP will reduce the risk to premature death and may also have a mutual synergy with weight loss.

That should encourage people to get tested and encourage diagnosed patients to make the treatment work.

My sleep doc and cardio said they believe my apnea and its side kicks will likely disappear when the excess wt is gone...that's enough to make me hope I will not be a hose-head the rest of my life, their belief inspires me to keep my carbs very low & exercise daily. I still might end up a hose-head lifer when the excess wt is gone...who knows? But all of my other health issues followed the onset of apnea, maybe at least they'll go away. I have still not forgiven my former primary who missed this on multiple visits...I'd have done anything not to have gone soooo far down this horrible pathway

Muse-Inc wrote: I have still not forgiven my former primary who missed this on multiple visits...

Yeah, the same thing happened to me. When I started getting borderline high blood pressure way back when, my PCP just said, "Stay away from the salt." WHY are doctors not checking for OSA more often?

There are are a few of us who are not in the 40-70 age group that were used in the study.
So none of those stats apply to us, I guess.

Or I suppose that if you are fortunate to make it to 71, they feel we are not worth including in a study anymore.

At least one of the reports on this important study quoted a participant who sought and used CPAP treatment. This was puzzling, especially since none of the articles about this report indicated whether any of the study subjects had treated their apnea. (They do conclude that in the future they will be studying the question of whether treatment mitigates 'premature mortality.')

I chased down the study itself, and it says this under Study Design and Population: "Eligible individuals were at least 40 years of age and were not being treated for sleep-disordered breathing with positive airway pressure, oral appliance, oxygen, or tracheostomy."

In case you want to read the study itself directly:
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/inf ... ed.1000132