Sleep Technology

A Century of Research

While You Were Sleeping: What Sleep Technologists Need to Know This Week Your media watchdog for headlines and trends relevant to sleep technology and patient education.  

Sleep technologists from across the world have been redeployed in the face of COVID-19. They’ve been called on to help COVID-19 patients, to test those coming in and out of the hospital and to help disperse personal protective equipment (PPE) to other departments. For Eduardo Hernandez, BSRC, RPSGT, CCSH who works at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando, the experience really opened his eyes to how valuable sleep technologists are during a crisis such as this.

Adaptive Servo Ventilation (ASV) is a non-invasive ventilatory treatment option created specifically for the treatment of adults who have obstructive sleep apnea and central and/or complex sleep apnea. It's one of the newer positive airway pressure (PAP) units on the market that continuously monitors and adjust to correct the patient's breathing problem.

Sleep Apnea Wire is an occasional supplemental news report capturing sleep breathing disorder news of relevant interest to sleep technologists and sleep health educators not featured in our regular news series, This Week in Sleep Medicine.

Scientists have noted that children with narcolepsy-cataplexy have an increased prevalence of overweight/obesity. More recent studies have linked narcolepsy-cataplexy with precocious puberty, and have indicated that the earlier the onset of narcolepsy-cataplexy in a child, the greater the risk of precocious puberty. Weight loss can occur after treating narcolepsy-cataplexy in children, but the extent that treating narcolepsy-cataplexy can reverse precocious puberty has not been examined in depth. Exactly how narcolepsy and precocious puberty are related is unclear but research studies have produced some interesting findings.

As sleep centers receive increasingly sick patients that have much more than Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), it becomes even more essential for sleep technologists to gain improved knowledge of their patients and their illnesses. This includes distinguishing between various lung conditions, such as obstructive lung disease and restrictive lung disease.

While You Were Sleeping: What Sleep Technologists Need to Know This Week   "Sleeping Hummingbird 'Snores' in Peru" [T.R. Forrester, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj5huCuhD_Q] Your media watchdog for headlines and trends relevant to sleep technology and patient education.  

Insomnia Wire is an occasional supplemental news report  capturing insomnia news of relevant interest to sleep technologists and sleep health educators not featured in our regular news series, This Week in Sleep Medicine.

As public health professionals make the determination it's safe to see patients and there are more relaxed stay-at-home restrictions, sleep technologist practices should strategically plan on how and when it's best to reopen. They should utilize recommended guidance from relevant prominent authorities, such as the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the American Medical Association (AMA), on how to safely reopen their facilities. The AAST has conveniently gathered a great deal of important COVID-19 information for sleep technologists that can be found on the AAST resource page.