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Philips Respironics has released the first issue of Philips Respironics Clinical Newsletter, Philips Respironics – The Clinical Advantage.
The Clinical Advantage is designed to bring you up to date clinical information on a current topic of interest. Each issue will cover a specific theme and include an editorial by Dr David White, and externally written feature articles, case studies and reviews of ongoing research by leading physicians. Dr White writes:
“Welcome to the first edition of Philips Respironics’ newsletter The Clinical Advanage. This is a newsletter dedicated to keeping you up to date with clinical information and new clinical literature regarding sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has been the engine that has driven the remarkable growth of the sleep field over the last 25 years. Although the medical community and the general public have been interested in the performance and quality-of-life problems that result from sleep apnea, the real concern has been the potential relationship between OSA and the cardiovascular system.
“The theme of the first issue is SDB and Cardiovascular disease and includes a feature article by Dr Michael Arzt (Germany). Michael Arzt summarizes the current state of the literature regarding the association between OSA and cardiovascular disease and points out many of the areas where controversy still remains. Case studies are also presented which develop several of these themes further. However, this controversy will not end until adequately powered, randomized, controlled, clinical trials are conducted addressing this issue. At last, several such studies are underway.”
Two studies that link the quality of sleep to the occurrence of erectile dysfunction and other urologic conditions were presented to reporters during the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA).
The studies suggest that men with erectile dysfunction (ED) should be screened for obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). After adjusting for age and other health conditions, patients with ED were more than twice as likely to have sleep apnoea than their normal counterparts.
This was the largest study to date to demonstrate a relationship between obstructive sleep apnoea and erectile dysfunction. Researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York evaluated 870 consecutively enrolled men through a cardiac screening program. Patients were screened for obstructive sleep apnea and erectile dysfunction through clinical questionnaires and were asked about their history of cardiovascular disease, blood pressure, diabetes and smoking. The mean age in the study population was 47.3 years, with a mean BMI of 30.2.
Sixty-three percent of patients in the study screened positive for obstructive sleep apnea, 5.6 percent had a history of diabetes, and 29 percent had a smoking history. The likelihood for having OSA increased as the severity of ED increased.
The good news for patients with both OSA and ED is that treatment for sleep apnea through continuous positive airway pressure therapy (CPAP), together with drug therapy, has been shown to improve symptoms of ED.
