The director of the sleep surgery program at Mount Sinai provides an overview of sleep apnea to New York Daily News readers.
“Sleep apnea is a form of sleep-disordered breathing in which the airway becomes narrowed as the tissues and muscles surrounding it relax,” says Dr. Fred Lin, director of the sleep surgery program at Mount Sinai. “The brain corrects for this suffocation by jerking the patient between deep sleep and light sleep, and even momentary awakening, though the individual doesn’t necessarily remember it.” Some 18-20 million Americans are living with sleep apnea, though doctors estimate that 80-90% of them remain undiagnosed.
