| | SEPTEMBER 20228UTLOOKHealthcare Tech IN MY OPINIONBy Ernesto Eusebio, Medical Director - Adult Sleep Medicine, Lee HealthRaising Awareness of Sleep DisordersSleep Medicine is a relatively new specialty that addresses problems such as excessive daytime sleepiness, insomnia, parasomnias (i.e., sleepwalking), sleep apnea and other sleep breathing disorders. Although the defined specialty has only been around for the last 50 years, these problems have been documented for centuries. Consider the fact that we spend roughly 30% of our lives sleeping, and only in these last 50 years have we come to understand sleep medicine the way we do now; I think it is safe to say, we are hardly scratching the surface of this specialty. The current understanding of sleep has been possible due to the technology available to us at a given time and in the hands of astute scientists. Very few specialties are as dependent on technology as sleep medicine. Such dependence has had a significant financial impact on the field over the last decade.For many years we had relied on our current gold standard, the polysomnogram, to diagnose and guide the management of sleep apnea and other sleep disorders. This kind of test involved an overnight stay, with electrodes measuring brain, heart and muscle activity, as well as belts and sensors tracking each breath. This
< Page 7 | Page 9 >