Treating Women's Sleep Apnea May Lower Heart Death Risk
Study: Machine That Keeps Airways Open Is Linked to a Lower Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke Death
WebMD News Archive
Studying the Benefits of CPAP Treatment in Women
For the study, researchers followed women who were referred to sleep clinics in Spain over a nine-year period.
The women were in their 50s and 60s when the study started. And most were overweight or obese. Obesity is known to increase the risk for breathing problems during sleep.
Many of the women also had risk factors for heart disease, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.
And about 1 in 5 reported that they’d already had a cardiovascular event, like a heart attack or stroke.
During sleep studies, researchers monitored the women and counted the number of times their breathing slowed or stopped for at least 10 seconds at a time.
Women with 10 to 29 breathing interruptions per hour were classified as having mild to moderate sleep apnea. Those with 30 or more interruptions per hour were told they had severe sleep apnea. Women who scored less than 10 were considered not to have sleep apnea and were used for comparison.
Every patient with severe sleep apnea was offered treatment with a CPAP machine that uses a pressurized flow of air to hold breathing passages open during the night. Women with mild to moderate sleep apnea were offered CPAP if they reported being sleepy during the day.
Counters on the machines told the researchers how long the women were using them at night.
During the study, 41 patients died of heart-related causes, including heart attacks and strokes and from heart failure.
Researchers discovered that women with severe, untreated sleep apnea -- meaning they didn’t use their CPAP machines, or used them for less than four hours a night -- had more than three times the risk of dying from a heart problem as women who didn’t have sleep apnea.
That was true even after researchers accounted for other things that influence the risk of heart disease, including age, body weight, high blood pressure, diabetes, and previous heart attacks or strokes.
Women with severe sleep apnea who used a CPAP machine for at least four hours a night saw no increase in their risk of heart or stroke-related death, however. They had the same risk as women who didn’t have sleep apnea.
“For patients with obstructive sleep apnea, adequate CPAP use is as important for their [heart] health as the pills they take for hypertension or diabetes,” researcher Francisco Campos-Rodriguez, MD, from the department of respiratory medicine at Valme University Hospital in Seville, Spain, says in an email to WebMD.
The retail cost of a CPAP machine runs from $400 to $800, but insurance plans may pick up the tab if it’s prescribed by a doctor.