Surgery

Sleep Apnea & CPAP Considerations for Surgery & Anesthetics (billboulton) (CPAP Safety) There is some very useful and practical information for sleep apnoea sufferers who are preparing for surgery, by Dr John Loadsman.

Summary

If you have sleep apnoea and you are planning to have surgery you should try to do the following if you possibly can....

[list]Discuss your apnoea and its implications with your surgeon and especially your anaesthetist well beforehand.

Find out if you need to have extra tests before coming to hospital.

Get as much information about your apnoea as you can (sleep study and other investigation reports, a letter from your sleep physician) and bring them with you.

Get as much information about your previous anaesthetics as you can and bring this with you as well.

Bring your CPAP or other appliance with you! Use it. Make sure the staff know how to use it.

Ask your anaesthetist for a letter or note detailing any problems or lack thereof for future reference[/list:u]Please take the time to read full document. It explains these things in more detail and gives many more helpful suggestions.

http://www.usyd.edu.au/anaes/lectures/OSApatinfo.html

Also check out....

http://www.healthyresources.com/sleep/apnea/contrib/anesthes.html

http://www.sleepapnea.org/resources/pubs/sameday.html

http://www.thedoctors.com/risk/bulletins/sleepapnea.asp

http://www.apneasupport.org/about30.html

Cheers,

Bill