jnk wrote:Are you thinking about WOB in terms of its causing measurable arousals and affecting architecture? Or are you thinking of WOB in terms of its causing fatigue from muscle effort and brain focus?
I'm thinking heightened WOB may impact
both of those categories along these lines:
jnk wrote:WOB in terms of its causing measurable arousals and affecting architecture?
This is already measured and known when excessive respiratory effort ("excessive WOB") shows up during a polysomnogram as recorded FL, RERA's, and even excessive negative esophageal pressure via PES measurement. If that's the extent of WOB-related pathology, then there's really no need to experimentally search for any other WOB-related factors IMO. However....
jnk wrote:WOB in terms of its causing fatigue from muscle effort and brain focus?
Those are additional symptoms that COPD patients sometimes report. Sometimes COPD flareups will occur during the daytime, causing those symptoms to occur. In that latter example we can attribute the daytime onset of those symptoms you described to something other than mitigated RERA's or avoided sleep-stage shifts. Sleep is not involved but sudden fatigue can be involved even without significant SpO2 desaturation. So perhaps we can attribute those sudden-onset daytime symptoms to the sudden onset of
increased WOB in those COPD patients more than anything else. If so, then there just may be more WOB-related pathology to look for in the ordinary SDB patient population---especially the UARS subset.
So that last daytime-onset COPD scenario is the basis of my wondering if Dr. Krakow's patients are
really experiencing significant sustained benefits to having their sustained respiratory effort decreased via that perfectly sinusoidal flow-curve (reflecting minimized neuromuscular WOB). And if so, do those sustained WOB-reduction benefits come from any areas besides just RERA avoidance and sleep-stage-shift avoidance?
In other words, what benefits might those perfectly-rounded, highly-efficient sinusoidal energy transfers (reflecting absolute minimal WOB) buy besides just helping sleep? Might there be
additional presently-unmeasured biologic benefits by Dr. Krakow's methodical and highly-efficient neuromuscular "respiratory unloading"? That first part you asked about is an absolute given IMO. And if that's as far as the benefits go (improved RERA's/architecture) , then hiking the pressure waaaay up there is probably unnecessary in my opinion as well (not just rested gal's). In that case clinicians need
only hike the pressure as high as it takes to mitigate arousals and consolidate sleep architecture. Period. But if the perfect sinusoids are genuinely buying Dr. Krakow's patients noticeable benefits, then that may be because there are other presently-unmeasured benefits occurring by that minimized WOB.