Written By: Debjani Arora | Updated : August 28, 2018 9:14 PM IST
CPAP or continuous positive airway pressure therapy is considered to be a gold standard treatment for sleep apnea. Nothing much has changed since the year it was introduced that is in 1980. Even today both patients and doctors swear by its efficacy and it gives people suffering from sleep apnea a new lease of life. Many people confuse snoring with sleep apnea, but the two are entirely different condition. When one snores, the breathing is obstructed due to a block in the nose, throat, mouth or the lungs. Snoring could be a symptom of sleep apnea. While sleep apnea is a condition where a person stops breathing in the middle of his sleep multiple times throughout the night, he may or may not make a loud snoring sound. These pauses in breathing can last from few seconds to minutes at least 5 to 30 times in an hour. Yes, as scary as it sounds sleep apnea is a dangerous condition which can increase one s chances of dying while in sleep. But that is not the only thing to worry about. Sleep apnea has other medical threats too.
It increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, obesity, diabetes, heart failure, irregular heartbeats among other problems. Psycho socially it could be a reason for unexplained irritability, poor concentration and create disturbance in interpersonal relationships along with making it difficult to drive on roads due to disrupted sleep at night. This is where a CPAP becomes a crucial step in managing the condition. Studies have already proved that CPAP is a great way of helping sleep apnea patients enjoy uninterrupted sleep and get going with life. But seems like the CPAP therapy has a lot of hidden benefits too as claimed by a recent study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The authors of the study tried to establish a link between CPAP therapy, sleep apnea and heart health. They followed 4.9 million adults from Denmark over a span of 13 years of which 40,485 were diagnosed with sleep apnea and 45.2% of them were on CPAP therapy.
The authors found that sleep apnea patients not using CPAP therapy were associated with an increased risk of heart failure, regardless of age. Specifically, sleep apnea patients over the age of 60 that did not use CPAP therapy had a 38% higher risk of heart failure compared to patients using CPAP therapy. This makes it clear that CPAP therapy not only helps the patients to sleep better but also helps them to boost their cardiovascular health. No wonder, CPAP is considered as the gold standard therapy to treat sleep apnea. However, further studies will be needed to establish the cause and effect link between CPAP, sleep apnea and heart health.
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