Sleep Apnea Alarmingly High In Obese!

Cleveland study of weight-loss surgery patients finds that 90 percent have medical condition

Nine in every 10 patients awaiting weight-loss surgery suffer from sleep apnea, a much higher percentage than are typically diagnosed, a University Hospitals of Cleveland study has found.

In a group of 249 patients followed between December 2003 and August 2005, 19 percent had been diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. However, after all the patients were tested in sleep labs before surgery, it was found that 91 percent of those patients actually had the condition.

“It’s a medical disease that is really under-recognized,” said Dr. Peter Hallowell, a UH bariatric surgeon who led the study with Dr. Thomas A. Stellato.

“Hypertension is known as the silent killer and sleep apnea is the same exact thing,” he said. “People are going to work everyday, getting sleepy during the day, getting sleepy behind the wheel and getting in accidents. There’s a certain public health concern with this. That’s one of the big take-home messages of this.”

Sleep apnea is a condition that causes people to stop breathing for 10 to 20 seconds during sleep, sometimes as often as 20 to 30 times an hour. It can lead to hypertension, daytime sleepiness, mood swings, headaches and depression.