Archive for March, 2007

Treating Insomnia Is Far Less Costly Than Ignoring It

Saturday 3 March 2007

People who are suffering with insomnia are advised to get treatment early for their sleep disorder to feel better faster. According to the study published in the March 1st issue of journal SLEEP, treating insomnia is much easier and less costly than failing to treat it.

The study was conducted by Ronald J. Ozminkowski, PhD, director of health and productivity research at Thomson Medstat in Ann Arbor, Mich., and James K. Walsh, PhD, director of the Sleep Medicine and Research Center in Chesterfield, Mo.

According to the research, they discovered that compared to other disorders, insomnia is inexpensive to treat. The costly medications also cost less than $200 per year for the treatment.

The researchers found that if insomnia is untreated, it can lead to $924 to $1,143 medical expenditure depending on the patient’s age, for just the six months before treatment began.

Insomnia leads to a significant increase in health care expenditures and absenteeism from work. About 10 percent of the adults in the U.S. (i.e., about 25 to 30 million people) have chronic insomnia, so the cost of failure to treat is huge for the U.S. population.

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Sleep Strip To Screen Patients For Sleep Apnea Syndrome

Friday 2 March 2007

The Sleep Strip is a disposable sleep apnea screener. It is designed to screen patients for sleep apnea syndrome reliably and conveniently, making it convenient for physicians.

sleep strip

The sleep strip is a one channel sleep lab consisting of signal detection, acquisition, analysis and display in one easy to use disposable package. Sleep strip single use sensors provide easiest, most effective and most advanced method for screening of sleep apnea.

It is completely all-in-one system. Additional equipment or components are not needed. The results can be read off directly from the built-in display of the device.

Working of sleep strip:

It consists of three miniature flow sensors which monitor the patient’s respiration throughout the night. The respiration patterns are analyzed to detect and count each apnea and hypopnea event as it occurs with the integrated CPU.

After the study, the sleep apnea severity score is calculated based on the patient’s Apnea Hypopnea Index (AHI) and it is permanently displayed on the built-in electrochemical display.