SLEEP YOUR WAY TO DIAGNOSIS

After a hard day’s work, its time for heading to a sleep chamber for some peaceful, undisturbed sleep. Many young working professionals in the city are referred to these sleep labs nowadays as there is an increasing problem of sleep disorders being reported. It’s not just popping the pills and attending counseling sessions for sleep disorder problems, as doctors in the city are now referring to this new diagnosis route via the sleep labs.

It’s a couple of nights spend at a plush chamber with medical equipments connected in such a way so that the vital parameters of the person can be continuously monitored. “There is a round the clock sleep technician, who is also around to keep an eye on the monitor as EEG, videograph recordings and the like are taken while the person is asleep. With the world average of sleep time coming down from 8.5 hours to 6.5 hours in past decade, there is a rise in the number of sleep associated disorders these days,” said Dr A Jagadish, consultant psychiatrist, Abhaya Hospital. He said that it is no longer only the common problem of Insomnia that was traditionally thought to be the only sleep disorder. “There are myriad problems like the Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Restless Leg Syndrome which are now being seen and only a detailed sleep episode study done at a sleep lab helps in diagnosing these problems,” added the doctor.

It was a strange problem of waking up due to a feeling of breathlessness and choking in the middle of the night so often that this 35-year-old was almost on the verge of giving up her job. “Due to this problem I could never have a peaceful, quality sleep as a result I always felt drowsy throughout the day accompanied by terrible lack of concentration. Despite taking sleeping pills there was no solution to the problem and instead this started reflecting on my professional life and that was when I was referred to the sleep lab and I was diagnosed of Obstructive Sleep Apnea,” said Rakhi Singh, a software engineer. Now that the root cause of her problem has been diagnosed she is on the right treatment path and is getting sound sleep at night.

“It is through continued night long diagnosis at these sleep labs that we can also identify whether the causative factor is physiological or psychological. The affected person’s respiratory, cardiac and sleep parameters are monitored in the sleep lab which helps us to identify the root cause of the problem and take on the required treatment option,” said Dr Padma Sundaram, HOD, pulmonology, Manipal Hospital. 

It's the sleep your way to diagnosis route that the doctors are now adopting to go to the depth of the disease and eliminate it from its root.