Sleep disorders becoming an 'epidemic'
Most sufferers don't know they have a problem, said Jim Snider, CEO of Sleepcare Diagnostics, a freestanding sleep disorders clinic that opened in January in Sarasota. Snider said only about 8 percent of patients with moderate sleep apnea have been diagnosed.
"For every 100 people with it, there's 92 walking around on their way to possible heart failure who don't even know they have it," Snider said.
Diagnosis starts with the primary care doctor, Snider and Cevallos said.
"Physicians should ask questions when they see their patients in their office about snoring. That's not happening very often," Snider said.
If the patient -- or the patient's spouse -- reports snoring, waking up often or other problems sleeping, specialists such as Cevallos or Dr. Steven Scheer at Sleepcare Diagnostics consult with the patient first to see if he or she meets the criteria for a sleep study. For instance, people with insomnia generally can be treated with medication or behavioral modifications and usually don't undergo a sleep study.
Patients who do undergo a sleep study will spend the night at the sleep disorder center. At University Community Hospital in Tampa or Pasco Regional Hospital in Zephyrhills, where Cevallos practices, doctors measure physiological changes such as eye movement, respiration, electrical activity of the heart, movement of the legs and oxygen saturation, then analyze the results to determine diagnosis and treatment.
The standard treatment is continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP.
"I have a frank talk with patients, tell them they have an increased risk of 20 percent to 25 percent of cardiovascular disease," Cevallos said.
