A group of researchers at The University of Queensland and Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital, in Australia have developed several techniques to diagnose Obstructive Sleep Apnea using snoring sounds alone.
Do you have a history of snoring and sleep apnea? Learn the symptoms at http://www.ihatecpap.com. Obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, is a disorder in which the tissues at the back of the throat temporarily collapse during sleep, causing repeated stops and starts in breathing during the night. This leads to poor-quality sleep and, often, daytime drowsiness.
The team, led by UQ School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering expert Dr. Udantha Abeyratne, discovered that snoring was one of the preliminary symptoms associated with sleep apnea: “OSA has snoring as the earliest symptom; almost all patients snore. We have developed several techniques to diagnose OSA using snoring sounds alone. Sounds are acquired through non-contact recording devices, and features are extracted. At present we are capable of screening OSA with greater than 90 percent sensitivity and specificity. These results are unmatched in the world in terms of the non-invasiveness and performance, and unequivocally illustrate the viability of a snore-based, non-contact OSA screening device.”
If you have sleep apnea or disruptive snoring and do not tolerate CPAP, I HATE CPAP wants to help you find answers go to http://www.IHateCPAP.com. This online sleep medicine resource promotes sleep medicine and emotionally connects with patients who have abandoned CPAP treatment due to negative experiences or prefer to explore an alternative to cpap.
Dr. Abeyratne and his team propose that the next generation of OSA treatments be based entirely on breathing-sound analysis. They argue that polysomnography (PSG), the technique currently in use against apnea, is cumbersome to the patient, and that it can provide a number of false readings. “PSG is inconvenient, expensive and is not suitable for mass screening of the population, especially children. The limited facilities around the world have created long waiting lists. There is an enormous clinical need for a simplified diagnostic instrument capable of convenient and reliable screening of OSA in a home setting,”
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