A Healio news report indicates that recent research shows patients with chronic mountain sickness had worse sleep disordered breathing and severe nocturnal hypoxemia.
Patients with chronic mountain sickness had worse sleep disordered breathing and severe nocturnal hypoxemia compared with a control group, with a subgroup of patients who had a patent foramen ovale showing even more severe sleep disordered breathing and hypoxemia, according to recent research published in Chest.
“Most importantly, alterations in nocturnal breathing and oxygenation were associated with systemic and pulmonary vascular dysfunction. In the presence of a [patent foramen ovale (PFO)], sleep disordered breathing and cardiovascular alterations were even more pronounced,” Emrush Rexhaj, MD, from the department of cardiology and clinical research at Inselspital, University of Bern, Switzerland, and colleagues wrote. “This could suggest that in analogy to recent observations in patients with sleep apnea syndrome at low altitude, PFO closure may improve systemic and pulmonary vascular function and sleep disordered breathing in patients with [chronic mountain sickness (CMS)].”
