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Sleep Apnea
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Progressing hypopnea

Posted by Newtons on April 13, 2006 at 07:34:49:

Hi All
I am confused about what is happening with my husband. He does not snore. he weighs 85kg (13stone) and is 170cm(6ft7]. 47yo. He has been told be a resp physician that he has a normal looking throat.

Since last August I have been aware that he has very shallow breathing at night, his chest wall barely moves. He was been investigated for persisting fatigue after being diagnosed with celiac disease and hashimoto's thyroid disease - both of these have been treated.

He had a sleep study in November that showed he hypopnea ... 5 episodes per hour on his side and 30 episodes and hour on his back. He otherwise had 98% sleep efficiency and only dropped his oxygen saturations to 89%.
The advice given was to lie on his side and loose a bit of weight. He only ever sleeps on his side so that is not a problem.

Since then I noticed that he has these hypopnea episodes about 40 time per hour on his side (usually 3 big breaths then 10 small breaths). This seems to go all night -not sure whether that means he has heaps of REM sleep time or that he is doing it even when not having REM.

For the past month he has completely stopped having the big sigh breaths. He just has hypopnea breaths all night. No apnea. No normal breaths. His chest wall does not move much, he does not snore, he only sleeps on his side. Its all very quiet and peaceful and he is oblivious to it.

I have no doubt that this is progressing.
I am terrified he will stop breathing.

I have looked at all the autoimmune diseases to see if fits the picture of anything else, but he has no other symptoms other then his fatigue.

He saw a specialist in February who refused to beleive that anything I said and held firmly with the study which said 5 hypopneas per hour on his side. He mainly wanted to put him in a box of needs CPAP or does not need CPAP. He did not really seam interested in what was causing it.

Does any of this make sense to anyone? Is this normal hypopnea?

I value your feedback

Chris

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