The Prevalence and Risk Factors of Sleep Disordered Breathing in a Heart Failure Program

Detailed Summary

The objective of this protocol is the evaluation of our clinical screening program for sleep disorders in patients with heart failure. These patients have very high prevalence of Sleep Disordered Breathing (SDB), including central and obstructive sleep apnea. There is also strong evidence that SDB, if unrecognized and untreated, will worsen heart failure and may leads to serious complications. Effective treatment of SDB results in improvement in heart failure and functional status. So far there are no guidelines in the area of screening in this patient population. The only test that would reliably rule out or confirm SDB is the polysomnography (PSG) this test is expensive and technically demanding. With the current approach to diagnosis and treatment of SDB, it routinely takes up to 5-6 months between the emergence of clinical suspicion of SDB and the initiation of appropriate treatment with CPAP. This delay and cost of this traditional approach, is a significant obstacle to providing highly needed care to this very vulnerable population. In OSU we have a state of the art Heart Failure Program and a Sleep Heart program that was created to develop an approach to prompt diagnosis and treatment of SDB in our heart failure patients. We designed an algorithm that employs validated questionnaires and FDA approved devices. We need, however to validate our algorithm against the gold standard: the PSG. Furthermore, we need to analyze the prevalence and risk factors of each sleep disorder in light of the recent changes in the management of heart failure, which may have influenced the risk factors and prevalence as we knew them. This protocol includes a combination of clinically indicated procedures, and others that are repeated for validation purposes. The accumulation and analysis of data is also done for research purposes.

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