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275 spontaneous arousals ? - Printable Version

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275 spontaneous arousals ? - PotatoStealer - 12-06-2019

So my wife often feels tired in the mornings and sometimes during the day, she likes to sleep a lot longer in the mornings than me if she can.

Her sleep issues is definitely not anywhere near mine, she rarely takes naps during the day but get sleepy fast when night approaches.
It was enough to warrant a sleep study, however the conclusion was that there was nothing wrong found.

The thing that really stood out reading the report to us was that she had 275 spontaneous arousals, giving and index of 40.9/h.
Sound like a lot but we have no idea what is normal, maybe it was just an issue being annoyed at all the cables connected?

Please have a look at the study, maybe someone with more knowledge have some good insight to what is going on?


RE: 275 spontaneous arousals ? - JoeyWallaby - 12-06-2019

Please contact them and ask if they scored RERAs. I REALLY doubt that in three seperate sleep studies (two for you and one for your wife), with hundreds of arousals, not a single one was a RERA.


RE: 275 spontaneous arousals ? - PotatoStealer - 12-06-2019

Thanks, will do!
Will be interesting to hear what they say.


RE: 275 spontaneous arousals ? - PotatoStealer - 12-09-2019

So I did call the sleep center, but could not get much useful information. It sounded like they only look for RERAs if ordered to or if it's "bad enough".
The woman on the other end said "If there are RERAs we would tell there are RERAs!" she sounded kinda angry/annoyed when I was asking about this...

Impression was that they had no idea, will bring it up with our Doctor next.


RE: 275 spontaneous arousals ? - slowriter - 12-09-2019

(12-09-2019, 02:48 PM)PotatoStealer Wrote: So I did call the sleep center, but could not get much useful information. It sounded like they only look for RERAs if ordered to or if it's "bad enough".
The woman on the other end said "If there are RERAs we would tell there are RERAs!" she sounded kinda angry/annoyed when I was asking about this...

Impression was that they had no idea, will bring it up with our Doctor next.

If they didn't bother to check for RERAs, that's pretty (what's the word I'm looking for) ... irresponsible.

Definitely try to sort that out with the doc, because whether they're breathing-related or not makes a HUGE difference in what you might do about it.

Actually, I missed the subsequent pages. They do report RERAs ("respiratory" arousals). They are pretty low.


RE: 275 spontaneous arousals ? - JoeyWallaby - 12-09-2019

Page 2 of 4. 2nd last column on the right. Look closely, it says RERA and it says 0.
Therefore, those respiratory arousals are not RERAs, they're just apneas, hypopneas or whatever. Not RERAs.


RE: 275 spontaneous arousals ? - PotatoStealer - 12-09-2019

Yeah, sorry the fax quality makes it difficult to see.


RE: 275 spontaneous arousals ? - DeepBreathing - 12-09-2019

One number that jumped out at me was the max heart rate = 255 bpm. That seems astonishingly high, and I'm surprised that wasn't followed up.


RE: 275 spontaneous arousals ? - Sleeprider - 12-10-2019

The graphs do not include a heart rate trace, so we don't know what conditions or duration is associated with tachycardia. That might be worth looking into. The detailed graphs show a persistent series of arousals with a couple notable periods of deep N3 sleep free of arousal. While I agree with the report conclusion that arousals are not respiratory event related, however they occur on average every minute, and during the clusters of apnea, they appear to be happening much more frequently. These arousals need to be treated, and to recommend better sleep hygiene seems very dismissive.

You know there are arousals, and the only conclusion is that it is not something likely to respond to sleep disordered breathing therapy. She needs to continue to pursue a medical solution to allow her to have sustained restorative sleep. This is an example of "sleep medicine" failing to treat the patient when the problem is not related to sleep apnea. I would start with a discussion with her regular physician to develop a plan to further investigate and treat this problem.


RE: 275 spontaneous arousals ? - JoeyWallaby - 12-14-2019

Marking RERAs is optional.