Doctors Answers (2)
The person will spend the night in a specialized center where they will be observed and monitored while they sleep. These centers try to provide a “homey” atmosphere to make it as comfortable as possible and allow for a natural night’s sleep. Comfortable night clothes should be worn. A blanket or pillows from home is acceptable to help relax and to fall sleep more easily. The patient may read or watch TV for a short period of time until the study starts.
Just before the study begins, electrodes will be applied to the scalp, face and body. No needles are used for sleep studies. These electrodes pick up signals from the brain, heart and body muscles. A sensor that looks much like an oxygen tube is placed beneath the nose to help monitor air flow. A light-weight elastic belt around the chest or stomach monitoring breathing movements and a small clip is placed on the finger to measure oxygen levels in the blood. Finally, sensors are placed on the ankles to detect leg movements.
After six to eight hours, the patient is awakened and the study ends. Most sleep centers have showers in their facilities to allow the patient to bathe before returning to home or work. The information gathered during the sleep study is sent to a sleep specialist for review to determine if the patient has a sleep disorder. A sleep study will help determine if an underlying sleep disorder is the cause of daytime and night time symptoms.
A sleep study is usually conducted in a lab overnight and several parameters are monitored including EEG, eye movements, snoring, heart rate, respirations or limb movements. Video monitoring is also performed to document behaviors, sleep position and movements.
How Can a Sleep Test Benefit Me?
Living with an untreated sleep disorder can put you at risk of several cardiovascular diseases, including but not limited high blood pressure, stroke and heart attack. Failure to get a good night's rest can also decrease your quality of life - socially, professionally and personally - as well as make you a danger to yourself and others while you perform normal daily activities such as driving and injuries that occur because you're too tired to physically function in a normal manner. Studies show that operating a car or other large machinery while sleepy is actually comparable to driving while intoxicated.
Testing your sleep patterns with a sleep test can help you and your doctor get to the bottom of your sleep deprivation symptoms and possibly cure your sleep disorders. During a sleep test, vital components of your sleep behavior, including heart rate, brain activity, bodily movement and breathing patterns, can be monitored and recorded for sleep experts to analyze. You'd be surprised how common some sleep disorders are in the United States. With a sleep test, a proper diagnosis and a relevant treatment plan, you will be on your way to reducing sleep problems and possibly other underlying conditions.
Performing a Sleep Test
Most sleep centers aim to make your sleep study experience as comfortable as possible. Sleep doctors want to create an ideal sleeping environment at the sleep center so that any strange or irregular behavior you display during the night can be isolated and monitored as a product of an innate sleep disorder as opposed to a side-effect of external or temporary means, such as trouble breathing at night because of allergies. Usually, the overnight study will be performed in a room at the sleep center that looks like a hotel room.
The patient needs to arrive at his or her sleep study appointment early by an hour or so. This will give the sleep study researchers time to record all your medical information and prepare your body to be monitored. You'll be hooked up to wires designed to record your brain activity and heart rate throughout the night. The wires will be stuck onto your skin and scalp using a special medical tape. Some patient find that sleeping with this sleep study equipment on is difficult, but having normal body functions monitored for irregularities is essential to the sleep study and essential to producing an accurate polysomnogram to be examined by the doctors. In the hotel-like room, cameras and other recording devices will also be installed to record your body movements and general behavior, such as if you display symptoms of sleepwalking or night terrors.
Polysomnography and Polysomnogram
A polysomnography is another name for an overnight sleep study. The term is more technically, meaning to write down the many bodily parameters functioning while a person sleeps. Such parameters include, of course, EEG activity in the brain, ECG rhythm in the heart, EMG skeletal muscular activity, respiratory functions and rapid or non-rapid eye movement. Changes in any of these functions will be recorded on graphs and in numbers that can be analyzed by a trained sleep technician after the sleep study or polysomnography is over. These results are together called a polysomnogram. Thus, a polysomnography is a procedure performed in order to produce a polysomnogram. In many cases, a thorough polysomnogram will lead to a diagnosis of the patient and an appropriate treatment plan for any sleep disorders or other conditions detected during the sleep study.
