Stop Breathing While You Sleep? You May Have Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea (apnea: Greek for "without breath") is a sleeping disorder where a subject frequently stops breathing during sleep. Because sleep apnea wakes you up frequently throughout the night (even if you don't notice it), you can suffer from symptoms of sleep deprivation, such as daytime fatigue, difficulty concentrating, unintentional napping and irritability or mood swings.
After menopause, hormones change and women tend to start looking like men in terms of where the weight gets put on. It's a time to be paying attention to the risks of Nasal Surgery because women begin to catch up to men in the rates of apnea after menopause,” Jun says.

The latter situation is referred to as complex sleep apnea.” Complex sleep apnea is used specifically when there is either a combination of obstructive and central events on the diagnostic sleep study or when central events emerge during titration of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) for obstructive sleep apnea.
Unlike obstructive sleep apnea, which is caused by a physical blockage, central sleep apnea is a neurological problem, says Robson Capasso, MD , chief of sleep surgery and associate professor of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine in California.

In the two-year multi-center pilot study, SHHS researchers and others will compare the cardiovascular effects of adding either CPAP or supplemental oxygen during sleep to standard care in patients with moderate to severe sleep apnea who are at high risk for cardiovascular disease events such as heart attack or stroke.
The effectiveness of uvulopalatopharyngoplasty is debatable, but that is likely because it does not alter enough upper airway soft tissue anatomy ( 19 ). Maxillomandibular surgery that affects a greater proportion of the upper airway has been shown to have a high success rate in patients with sleep apnea ( 20 ).

Some possible tests include an echocardiogram to look at the structure and function of the heart to evaluate for heart failure and other health problems; an electrocardiogram (EKG) to scan for irregular heartbeat such as atrial fibrillation ; or arterial blood gases to measure levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your blood.