Benefits

Home Sleep Testing, otherwise known as HST, is a way to evaluate patients for sleep apnea from the comfort of their own bed.  This entails wearing a simple device which will record your breathing patterns to tell if there are pauses in breathing during your sleep. 

Home sleep testing is intended for individuals who, after being assessed by their treating physician, have a moderate to high suspicion of obstructive sleep apnea.  Typically, home sleep test patients should have at least two of the following symptoms:

• Excessive snoring
• Interruptions of breath during sleep (usually noticed by others)
• Extreme daytime drowsiness
• Morning headaches
• High blood pressure
• Incapability to concentrate
• Depression
• Decreased interest in sex
• Easily irritable
• Heartburn

SuperCare acknowledges the fact that people are concerned about comfort, convenience and cost when it comes to their healthcare.  Being comfortable not only puts you at ease, it also helps us to get the most accurate reading possible.  With your bedtime routine being uninterrupted, home sleep testing fits conveniently into your everyday lifestyle.  As opposed to a more traditional procedure performed at a sleep laboratory, the cost of home sleep testing is significantly less.

Before home sleep testing, if a patient was suspected of having sleep apnea, their primary care physician would refer them to a sleep specialist to have them evaluated.  If the specialist agreed with the physician after evaluation, they would then order a sleep study in a special facility called a sleep lab.  This would require the patient to then spend the night in this sleep lab for observation.  The disadvantages to this process are that the costs are expensive and of course, the inconvenience of having the sleep away from home for the night.  This option may be appropriate if the patient has multiple disease states and/or central sleep apnea.

According to several published sleep apnea journals, patients who are more likely of having obstructive sleep apnea, a randomized controlled trial found that home sleep testing may be adequate and easier to obtain than formal sleep lab testing.

SuperCare provides you, the patient, with an ApneaLink, an easy to use home sleep testing device that objectively identifies patients at risk for obstructive sleep apnea, and detailed diagram instructions as well as a DVD demonstrating how the process works. 

NEXT: The Home Sleep Testing Procedure