In search of a good night's sleep

By Giancarlo Rinaldi
BBC Scotland news website, south of Scotland reporter

Inside Medicine: Sleep expert

There are few people who actually enjoy the sound of their alarm clock waking them up in the morning.

Its tone can seem especially cruel if it follows a disturbed night's sleep.

It leaves the rest of the day with that horrible fuzzy-headed feeling.

For the majority of people, thankfully, that kind of experience is the exception rather than the rule.

However, for sufferers of one ailment there are very few days which begin with the feeling they have had a really good night's sleep.

Obstructive Sleep Apnoea is a respiratory condition in which the throat repeatedly narrows or closes during sleep.

There are maybe 40,000 people in Scotland who do not know they have a sleep apnoea Dr Tom McKay Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh

Air is blocked from getting into the lungs, and low oxygen levels cause the brain to wake the person up.

Sufferers are often heavy snorers and can get as little as two to three hours of sleep a night.

According to Dr Tom McKay of the sleep medicine department at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary the true scale of the problem is unknown.

"There are maybe 40,000 people in Scotland who do not know they have a sleep apnoea," he said.

"It goes undiagnosed because people do not ask the right questions about snoring, about breath-holding overnight or about daytime sleepiness."

Sufferers like Lesley Rennie said she did not know she had a problem for some time.

Guide to sleeping disorders

"I just felt very, very tired and I just pooh-poohed it - I kept putting it down to overwork and running a home," she said.

"Then the snoring got very, very bad and I stopped breathing."

The problem resulted in one very lucky escape.

"I was driving back from a friend's house one night and stopped at traffic lights," she said.

"I must have momentarily fallen asleep and I went through a red light."

Fortunately there was nobody on the road and she was diagnosed with OSA soon after and given treatment.

NHS Dumfries and Galloway is one health board which is trying a novel approach to help sufferers.

I just thought well why not use a local hotel based service because it is no different Respiratory nurse Phyllis Murphy NHS Dumfries and Galloway

It puts patients up in hotels to try to help with diagnosis of their problems and to decide upon a treatment.

Clinicians have found a hotel bedroom is the ideal environment for tests to be carried out, rather than asking people to travel long distances with home test kits.

"The idea came up when we were finding that especially in the winter there was a very high cancellation rate for sleep studies," explained lead respiratory nurse Phyllis Murphy.

"As a result the waiting list for it was growing and we weren't able to meet the targets to see patients.

"I just thought - well why not use a local hotel based service because it is no different?"

Patients are given a half hour medical appointment and shown how the special kits work and then sent off to the hotel.

Straightforward treatment

"They take it with them, they go and sleep in the hotel and they come back the next day and get the results," said Ms Murphy.

If they are diagnosed with sleep apnoea then Dr McKay said treatment could be pretty straightforward, with a machine to help them breathe.

"We can sort the problem reasonably easily," he said.

"The most successful option is to get people to wear a small mask.

"In 80% to 90% of cases it is extremely successful within the first night or two."

And, as any parent with a young baby can tell you, what a difference those seven or eight hours sleep can make.