Undiagnosed sleep apnea is a major comorbidity of CVD and a significant risk factor for stroke, CAD, CHF and AFib4. Sleep apnea puts an enormous strain on the heart and remodels the cardiac substrate through stretching, oxidative stress and frequent sympathetic surges5. Diagnosing sleep apnea at home with the WatchPAT®️ home sleep apnea diagnosis device improves compliance leading to better patient outcomes.
The use of CPAP is associated with a 42% relative risk reduction in AFib recurrence in patients with OSA. This reduction of AFib recurrence appears to be independent of medical or catheter ablation therapy. These results advocate for active screening for undiagnosed OSA in patients with AFib when OSA is clinically suspected7. A simple yes/no questionnaire called STOP-BANG takes just a few minutes to identify those patients with a high probability of obstructive sleep apnea.
Total Sleep Solutions is a novel cross-disciplinary model of care developed in collaboration with cardiologists, sleep physicians and industry partners for the management of cardiac patients.
It expands the reach of sleep services by enabling point of care variability, providing a scalable model for management of a massive volume of patients’ while reducing wait times and overall cost, and offering optimized IT systems and human field resources to support the vast underdiagnosed pool of cardiac patients suffering from the co-morbidity of Sleep Apnea.