Compliance with CPAP therapy in patients with the sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome

The Average duration of CPAP use (4-7 hours/night) seems disappointing. However, these results have to be compared with those obtained by similar objective methods in other chronic conditions. For example, asthmatic chronic conditions. For example, asthmatic patients have been shown by electronic monitoring devices to use their chronic treatment as instructed on only 37% of days, and anti-epileptic treatment was taken as prescribed on 39% of the days in another study.

The results in our study are very similar to those in a contemporaneous study performed

in two centres in North America for which the average duration of CPAP used by 35 patients with sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome was 4.9 (2-0) hours/night, and the CPAP was received at the appropriate pressure for 91% of the CPAP run time. The subjects in that study only used their CPAP units for 66% of the nights, however, and we therefore deduce that their average CPAP use was 3-2 hours/ night. Similar results have been reported by another North American group."4 CPAP run times averaging 5 1 hours/night were obtained in a French sample of 45 patients. Our results extend these observations by examining correlates between CPAP usage and severity of the sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome, and indicate that there was no correlation between any

measure of severity of the sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome and objective CPAP use. This somewhat surprising result means, not only that patients with severe sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome cannot be relied upon to comply with their therapy, but also that some patients with mild sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome in terms of apnoea + hypopnoea frequency or objective daytime sleepiness (MSLT) use their CPAP therapy regularly.

Compliance w CPAP therapy in pts with the sleep apnoea hypopnea syndrome.pdf

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