Resperonics sleep apnia treatment products

Respironics (resperonics) manufactures a range of respiratory medical devices for use either in home or in hospital. The company has several suitable CPAP, BiPAP and other sleep apnia (apnea) devices.

What is sleep apnia?

Sleep apnia (apena) is a sleeping disorder in where frequent breathing pauses during sleeping are incurred. The pauses are called apneas which literally means with no breath. The length of the pause can often be a minute or more. Patients with sleep apnea are usually not aware of the problem unless their partner observes it. SA are around 2-3 times as common in older adults and about twice as common in males as in females. Treatment options are to use different devices for keeping airways open, or going through surgery of different types but with the main thing in common that they remove or shrink tissue in the airways that would otherwise obstruct breathing. 

What sleep apnea devices do Respironics (resperonics) make?

CPAP is short for Continous Positive Air Pressure (cepap). The idea is to pump a continous stream of air into the lungs of the patient suffering from apnia. The flow will keep the airways open and the collapse that normally lead to the breathing pauses is prevented. The CPAP machine was an invention that revolutionized the treatment of sleep apnea.

Respironics (resperonics) make CPAP and BiPAP therapy machines as well as Auto PAP devices. Their M-series sleep devices systems is the newest range where all models have been recently redesigned. They also make the REMstar family (pre-M series) and the BiPAP family.

Different types of sleep apena (apnea)

The types of apnia are classified from the reasons breathing stops during sleep: 

Obstructive sleep apnia

The OSA is the most common of the apnias. With OSA, breathing works normally but there are intermittent blockages due to the upper airways collapsing when sleeping.

Central sleep apena

The central SA is caused by malfunctions to the signaling between the brain and the chest musculature during sleep, which causes brreathing pauses. 

Mixed sleep apnea

The mixed SA is the most diffiult of the SA's to treat. Patients with mixed sleep apnea suffer from periodic failures in the signalling from the brain that triggers the breathing reflexes. When the patient tries to breathe in between, the upper airways has a blockage and breathing fails.

The airway collapsing is present in both OSA and mixed SA. It is the upper airway, running from the opening of the mouth down to the lungs that becomes obstructed when your muscles start relaxing (when you fall asleep). Normally, the relaxation doesn't make the airway collaps completely, but in some patient this happens on and off, these are the sleep apnia patients. It is quite frequent that SA patients are also having snoring problems (due to the gasping for air when the body forces a wake up).

There can also be blocking due to deformations, such as too large tongue, tossils and uvula. The actual form and shape of the jaw can also play a role here and there can be blockages in the nose passages (polyps) and other causes of sleep apnia as well.