50% of Cardiology Patients Have Sleep Apnea. Another stunning statistic I learned last night from Richard Mueller, a cardiologist in New York City who spoke at last night's NYC A.W.A.K.E. meeting.
Dr. Mueller was not pushing this hard, but he did say it wouldn't be unreasonable for every sleep apnea patient to get a CAT scan of his/her heart -- I think it's called a CTA -- that detects small blockages/ plaque in the arteries that can lead to a fatal heart attack.
Rock Hinkle said:
We see quite a few different arrythmias in the sleep lab. I would say that 75% of our patients have some sort of heart problem.
Well a PSG is the first step. All be it a 2 lead EKG we do monitor the heart along wiht many other things. A sleep study can be a contributing factor in the early diagnosis of many health problems. Many times now i have woke up doctors in the middle of the night to fax over EKG screen shots. I am curently studying EEG patterns to help in identifying issues of the brain such as seizures, or tumors. Our brain does a diagnostic overview of itself and the body during sleep. A PSG is just an external reading of that report.