Tired All The Time? It May Be Sleep Apnea

Main Category: Sleep / Sleep Disorders / Insomnia
Article Date: 21 Aug 2008 - 2:00 PDT

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Repetitive blockages of the airway, called obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), can reduce airflow or cause breathing to stop. When this happens, frequent brief awakenings can leave a person feeling excessively sleepy during the day, even though they believe they have had a full night's sleep. More serious consequences, including obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and diabetes -- are often related to OSA. Primary care physicians must be able to recognize symptoms of OSA and counsel their patients to provide optimal treatment.

To make clinicians aware of the importance of proper diagnosis and management of OSA, The Journal of Family Practice published a 32-page supplement in August 2008, Obstructive sleep apnea: Recognition and management in primary care. This multi-authored supplement discusses recognition of OSA, its economic and societal burden, clinical consequences, and treatment options.

The Journal of Family Practice, an indexed and peer-reviewed journal distributed to 96,000 family physicians, has published Obstructive sleep apnea: Recognition and management in primary care with support from Cephalon, Inc. It is available in print and can be found online at: http://www.jfponline.com/supplements.asp?id=6507.

Nurse practitioners and physician assistants can find this supplement on http://ttp://www.apctoday.com, an online resource for advanced practice clinicians.

The Journal of Family Practice is published by Dowden Health Media, a Division of Lebhar-Friedman, Inc. APCTODAY is copyrighted by Dowden Health Media, a Division of Lebhar-Friedman, Inc. Dowden Health Media is a full-service healthcare communications company that specializes in high-quality communication with physicians, advanced practice clinicians, and consumers. Its highly respected, peer-reviewed journals reach more than 300,000 physicians and clinicians in surgery, psychiatry, family practice, internal medicine and obstetrics/gynecology.

Dowden Health Media
http://www.dowdenhealth.com