Sleep Apnea

The incidence of Sleep Apnea is approaching epidemic proportions worldwide... 1 in 4 men and 1 in 9 women suffer from sleep apnea. That's over 29 million people with sleep apnea in the United States alone!! With greater awareness and easier sccess to sleep studies (home sleep studies) that number is expected to double within the next 10 years.

The consequences of NOT treating sleep apnea is associated with high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, dementia, depression. Untreated sleep apnea is associated with a 4-fold increase in traffic and workplace accidents.

The undisputed, gold-standard treatment for sleep apnea is a positive Airway Pressure machine (CPAP, aPAP, BiPAP). The use of these machines (nightly) is critical for overall health and greatly improves quality of life.  One of the biggest roadblocks to compliance occurs during traveling situations... apnea machines are big, bulky and inconvienent to transport. 

Central CPAP (patent pending) is a built in apnea machine. The user simply inserts their "chip" from home (which programs the exact individual pressures they get at home) and hooks up their tube / mask set up from home. Home machines would no longer need to be transported away from home. 

The goal of this study is to examine how common sleep apnea is, how often do people travel with their CPAP machine and how likely they would be to use an easier alternative.