Refurbished Sleep Lab At Toronto Hospital Helps People With Sleep Apnea,Insomnia & Other Sleep Disorders

Monday, March 21st, 2011 at 3:19 PM

Refurbished sleep lab means more people will get a better night's sleep. Dr. Douglas Bradley sits in the control room for the newly refurbished Sleep Lab at Toronto General Hospital. Staff photo/JUSTIN SKINNER

For a growing number of Canadians, getting a good night’s sleep is easier said than done. For some, a lack of sleep can be a deadly proposition.

Doctors and technicians at the newly refurbished Sleep Country Canada Sleep Medicine Labs at Toronto General Hospital are working to help people with sleep disorders ranging from sleep apnea to insomnia to narcolepsy.

The lab recently received new equipment, thanks to a donation from Sleep Country Canada, which will help doctors better monitor those dealing with sleep conditions.

Dr. T. Douglas Bradley, director of the sleep labs, has a long-standing history of researching and treating sleep disorders and specializes in sleep apnea. The condition is one of the most commonly treated – and most dangerous – at the hospital.

When sleeping, muscles around the airway relax, leading to a narrowing of the airway. For sleep apnea sufferers, the airway is narrowed enough to cut off the flow of air, effectively choking the sleeper and causing them to wake.The results are far more hazardous than simple fatigue.

“(Sleep apnea sufferers) wake up frequently and lack deep sleep and dream sleep, which the body needs,” Bradley said. “That can increase the risk of accidents when they’re awake.”

Worse still, sleep apnea sufferers often have underlying heart conditions; waking up throughout the night as the body’s fight-or-flight response reacts to a lack of oxygen causes blood pressure to rise when normal sleep would typically cause it to fall.

“The heart’s subjected to tremendous pressures,” Bradley said. “The risk of having a stroke is three to four times greater and heart failure is two to three times greater than if a person didn’t have sleep apnea.”

The sleep lab monitors sufferers as they sleep, keeping track of a variety of factors ranging from a patient’s breathing volume, heart rate and incidences of apnea-induced waking.

New equipment in the lab helps technicians track a patient’s sleeping in more ways, including a machine to measure the carbon dioxide level in a patient.

“A lot of the people we see have severe heart and lung diseases, and their carbon dioxide levels are too high or too low,” Bradley said. “People transpire carbon dioxide through their skin, and (the machine) helps us diagnose respiratory failure or what we call hypoventilation.”

Sleep apnea episodes typically last 10 to 60 seconds and can occur as often as 100 times per hour.

The condition is caused by a variety of factors including obesity, facial deformities and sedentary living. Men are three times as likely as women to develop sleep apnea.

Recent findings have shown compression stockings to be effective in reducing the severity of sleep apnea by as much as 40 per cent in many cases.

“Sitting all day long, we collect fluid in our legs,” Bradley said. “When we sleep, some of that fluid ends up in our neck, so as our calves become smaller at night, our necks become (more swollen).”

Diuretics can also help in reducing the impact of water retention on sleep apnea, but Bradley said the best measure to combat the condition is maintaining a healthy weight.

“The main thing is to (use) discipline in exercise and eating,” he said. “People should try to somehow incorporate modest levels of exercise into clerical work – we’re all sitting around in front of computers all day – it’s not like we all have to change our whole lifestyle.”

Bradley said some studies have suggested sleep apnea rates have doubled since the condition was first studied in earnest in the early 1990s. He expects those rates to continue to climb as childhood obesity becomes more prevalent.

“We need a public campaign like the one for smoking to get children more active. We’ve got to get kids off their rear ends.”

For more and more people, public awareness over sleep apnea, along with advances being made at sleep labs like the one at Toronto General Hospital, could mean the difference between a good night’s sleep, severe health problems and even death.