Respironics sleep apnia (apnea) treatment

Respironics (resperonics, respironix) are manufacturers of respiratory devices for treatment of sleep apnea (apnia, apena) with a large range of BiPAP, CPAP (cepap) and other apnea and snoreing (snoaring) relief devices.

What is sleep apnea (apnia)?

Sleep apnea (apnia, apena) is a disturbance in sleeping whereby breathing stops for short periods a large number of time during a nights sleep. These interruptions can last 60 seconds or sometimes even more, before the body reacts to the low oxygen level in the blood and starts emergency wakeup - which often results in a quick gasp for air - snoring.

Patients suffering from sleep apnia quite often are not even aware they have the condition, especially when living alone. Sleep apena is up to three times as frequent a condition in older patients and it can be up to 2 times as frequent in men. The different apnia treatments are usually focused on devices designed to keep a free flow of air in the upper airways but in more difficult cases it can be a case of surgery required in where excess tissue is removed from the airways to help keeping these open during sleeping and prevent OSA (obstructive sleep apnia).

Respironics sleep apnea and snoering (snoaring) range

CPAP is the common term derived from the longer name "Continous Positive Air Pressure". Sometimes you may see it called cepap instead. By pumping a stream of air continously into the lungs of the patient (or rather - by keeping a pressure of air inwards all the time), the airways will get the help they need to avoid the collapsing that can lead to the apnea. The CPAP machine doesn't actually do the breathing job, is is still the patient doing this, but the CPAP keeps the airflow large enough to avoid blockage during inhaling.

Respironics manufactures CPAP and BiPAP machines but also a range of so called Auto PAP devices. The most recently designed product range for treatment of sleeping disorders is the M-series. Of the other ranges there are the REM-star family (used to be the pre-M range) and the BiPAP series of apnia products.

Sleep apnea (apnia, apena) types

The usual classification of the different types of apnea is done based on the reason the interruption (apnia) of the breathing occurs and the normally recognized types in medical science is:

Central sleep apnia

With central SA, disruptions to the signal functions between the breathing muscles and the brain causes a break in the breathing during sleep.

Obstructive sleep apena

The obstructive SA, also often called simply OSA, is the most common sleep apnea type. With this type of SA, breathing functions in a normal way most of the time but now and then there are short obstructions in the breathing due to the collapsing of the upper airways while sleeping.

Mixed sleep apnea (SA)

This is the most difficult of the disorders when it comes to treatment of sleep apnia. Patients suffering from the mixed variety of the condition will have the signalling failure from the central SA occuring some of the time and in between this when the patient tries to achieve normal breathing again, there will be a collapse in the upper airways leading to an interrupt typical for the obstructive sleep apnia.  

So, the blockage, or collapsing of the upper airways is a feature of both OSA and mixed sleep apnea. The long airway which extends from the lungs up to the opening of your mouth will suffer from an obstruction somewhere along the length of it when your breathing musculature relaxes during sleep. This slackening of the muscles normally will not lead to a full collaps of the airways but in some cases it will, these are the SA patients. Patients suffering from SA quite often also have a problem with snoring.

Physical abnormalities like unusually large uvula, tongue or tossils can also leed to a blockage. The shape of the bones around the airways such as the jaw bone can also affect the risk of getting SA and require sleep apnia treatment.