Novel diagnostic techniques to improve our classification of the hypoxaemic burden in sleep disorders

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is characterized by repetitive collapse (apnoea) or partial collapse (hypopnoea) of the pharyngeal airway during sleep. These airway obstructions lead to increasingly powerful respiratory efforts until the airway reopens and breathing is restored, often in association with an arousal from sleep. These transient events also expose the sufferer to intermittent hypoxia and hypercapnia which have important deleterious cardiovascular consequences. However, our current metrics for capturing the ‘degree’ of the hypoxaemic burden are relatively superficial (i.e. they simply count the number of times/hr your oxygen levels fall). Therefore, this project will employ a novel tool-kit to objectively analyse the overnight oxygen profile and determine how these novel metrics are correlated to self-reported sleepiness and cardiovascular disease.