Posted by sleepy-in-seattle on September 29, 2005 at 23:22:16:

In Reply to: Need Tips to get thru Sleep Study posted by NocNurse on September 29, 2005 at 22:02:16:

There is a wide variance in protocol among sleep labs.

Here in Seattle, there is one associated with our major university that I went to last fall. They use a lot of student interns and are very data intensive. I had over 80(!) sensors on my body - took an hour to get them all placed properly.

They wanted me to use THEIR nasal pillows instead of mine. I tried three sizes, and even the smallest distended my nostrils and went most of the way up my nasal passages - painful and intrusive.

They then insisted that I lie on my back. I said - I haven't slept on my back since I was a little kid. They said they wanted to record worst case scenarios.

By this time, I realized that they were doing this primarily to collect data. My particular needs were secondary to that. However, my goal was to document worsened sleep apnea in order to build a case for MMA surgery.

In the two other sleep studies I've had, I got 6.5 and 7 hours of sleep respectively. In this one, I got 1.5. No surprise to me.

At the end, they said I didn't sleep long enough for them to titrate me, so I'd have to come back again. Not gonna happen at $2000 a pop. Unless they want to waive the fee for the first one - seeing how the poor results were due to *their* issues, not mine.

There is no reason they needed to fiddle with your chin monitor - bruxism can be easily detected without a sleep study. By doing that, they compromised your time-consuming and expensive sleep study.

I am disturbed that in the last two years or so, I have heard from many people about "failed" sleep studies where they had to go back for a second try. I wonder if there aren't some unecessary studies going on. After all, most are paid by insurance, so as long as there appears to be a real reason (patient did not sleep long enough to get proper data) there isn't a lot of push back.

By the way, teeth grinding (aka bruxism) is not life-threatening or debilitating like OSA. The worst that can happen is you could break a tooth. It is easily treated by a cheap drugstore nightguard, or if you want better - your dentist or orthdontist can make one for ~$50-75.

I would tell your ENT and PCP why you were unhappy with the sleep lab.

Follow Ups:

• Re: Need Tips to get thru Sleep Study D.H. 02:39 9/30/05 (0)
• Re: Need Tips to get thru Sleep Study NocNurse 23:37 9/29/05 (2)
  • Re: Need Tips to get thru Sleep Study sleepy-in-seattle 07:53 9/30/05 (1)
    • Re: Need Tips to get thru Sleep Study NocNurse 19:25 9/30/05 (0)

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