Night Owl

Often a patient will report only snoring as an issue, but it is a symptom of a narrow airway. The dilemma as a health professional is to always rule out sleep disordered breathing (such as obstructive sleep apnoea) that may co-exist.

In this context, a sleep study called a Polysomnography, is arranged through your sleep physician via a referral from you GP. This is the gold standard to determine if you may in fact have a sleep disordered breathing issue as well as snoring. These studies involve you being wired with several devices to record brain and lung function, including heart rate and oxygen levels and body movement while you sleep, These sleep studies are labelled as Level 1 (in hospital sleep clinic overnight) or Level 2 (in which the sleep test equipment is set up and you take it home overnight and return the equipment the following day for data interpretation)

The equipment is simple to set up and is a level 4 study. It measures your oxygen saturation levels and predicts via an algorithm, the likelihood of obstructive apnoea being present.

The lastest technology sits on your left fore finger and reads via blue tooth to your mobile phone overnight. The app for the night owl can be simply downloaded onto your mobile phone.

The process to set this up, takes 2 minutes.

A/Professor Michael Stubbs will use this screening tool as an indication only if you have sleep apnoea, or in fact, just snoring. This saves time and money for you in having a formal sleep study when it may not be needed. He will discuss this option with you at your appointment.