What Is Hypopnea, And Can You Please Break The Results Down?

[Navy04]

Good afternoon all,

Below is my Sleep Study results that I received today. Can you please explain what it means and if I can file for VA SC? Thank you all so much and hope you are having a good week so far.

Date of Study: 12/23/14

Indication: Elevated Epworth sleepiness scale of 21

Recommendations: Clinical Correlation

Study in Detail: The patient is a 32 year old male who stands 75 inches and weighs 200 lbs with a BMI of 24.7. Diagnostic polysomnography was performed on 12/23/2014 for the aforementioned indications.

Sleep period time was 329 minutes with a total sleep time 303 minutes yielding low efficiency of 74%. Latency to sleep onset prolonged to 80 minutes and REM latency mildly elevated at 96 minutes. Wakefulness after sleep onset was slightly increased to 30 minutes. There were 16 awakenings, 88 arousals, and an arousal index of 17. Sleep staging showed increased wakefulness at 33% with Stage 1 less than 3%, Stage II with 53%, slow wave sleep of 18% and REM of 18%.

There were 0 Apneas and 3 Hypopneas for an apnea/hypopnea index less than 1. Events were both in REM and non-REM and occurred in the supine position. The longest duration hypopnea was 14 seconds. Desaturation occurred to a low value of 88. It was trivial in duration. Snoring was minimal.

[Navy04]

Also forgot to mention that while I was Active, I had a Sleep Study in Nov 2012. The results were inconclusive as I slept on my stomach and the wires kept wrapping around my body. So the Nurse on staff stopped the study and woke me up. As you all know I was Medically Retired from the Navy in Feb 13. I did not file for anything Sleep related with the VA as I was tackling other issues and was waiting on another sleep study all this time, WTH! Thanks again for any input from all you good folks on here. I forgo to ask is this issue worth filing, I am not as good at the CFR Regulations as most of you pros on here.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Navy04

[john999]

It means you stopped breathing and your oxygen saturation level dropped. Mine drops to 71% at times and I have had surgery for the OSA. I know that I stop breathing for up to a minute. This drives up your blood pressure and is not good. Do you use the Cpap? I had Inspire implant and I still have problems. I am going to get the device adjusted. I may end up wearing a Cpap again but I sure hope not. I had high pressure and it was very uncomfortable. I just could not stand it. I weigh about 245 now which is too much but due to disabilities I don't get much exercise. My cardiologist says exercise is 10% and 90% is what you eat as far as weight gain which is directly related to OSA and all the other risk factors for DMII and CAD. It is easy for VA to tell vets to lose 50 lbs, but hard as heck to do it.

John

[Navy04]

I just found all this out bud, so I don't use a CPAP. I also have high BP and Cholestrol even though I eat like a rabbit due to my Crohns Disease. I suffer from horrible headaches almost every morning and I am very tired all of the time, and of course it affects my severe PTSD. As you read above I am tall, well built and not overweight so the VA sure cant use that as an excuse in my case. Just don't know much about Apnea. Do you think that there is enough there to file Bud? Also I am SC for 10% Damage to Cranial Nerve as a result of a Botched Toncilectomy procedure requiring immediate Second Surgery and damage to the throat area as a result. Thanks again for the info

[NemosNavy]

A hypoapnea is an abnormally low respiratory rate or shallow breathing which causes a drop in oxygen saturation (your 88%) in your red blood cells. This causes an increase in heart rate to compensate for the decrease. The AHI or apnea-hypoapnea index is how you figure out how bad your OSA (apneas/hypoapneas divided by minutes slept I believe). Anything under an AHI of 5 per hour is considered normal and not having OSA. According to your post. your index was a 1. It doesn't sound like you have OSA or need a CPAP. The arousals and awakenings are the big thing that could be causing your headaches because you are chronically sleep deprived. Hope this helps or atleast makes sense.