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Is There A Difference Between Apnea And Hypopnea?

Breathing is an essential part of a person’s life, as evidenced by having your pulse and respiratory rate part of your vital signs. In fact, the way you breathe could mean a lot of things to a person’s overall health and condition. The sound, frequency, and ease of difficulty in breathing would signal a doctor to dig deeper and investigate your medical condition. Even in your sleep, the way you breathe also makes a difference in your overall health, and this is how sleep breathing patterns become an important issue in medicine even in the early 1980s. So when speaking about these sleep breathing issues, various questions would surface, like does sleep apnea affect fat people more? Is there really a difference between apnea and hypopnea? How are the two related, and what are their similarities and disparities?

 

Difference between apnea and hypopnea: An overview

To distinguish the difference between apnea and hypopnea, we must first look closer to the definition of each breathing condition. Let us find out the meaning of each respiratory disorder and understand them, individually so we can differentiate them from one another.

 

What is sleep apnea?

sleep apneaSleep apnea is the first between the two to have a clear definition as a respiratory condition. Sleep apnea is a disorder characterized by sudden stops and starts in a breathing pattern.  This can be considered a potentially serious health condition especially if it occurs frequently and regularly since oxygen delivery to the brain gets affected if your breathing or respiration gets disrupted during sleep. The two main types of sleep apnea, obstructive and central apnea, differs depending on the cause of the breathing interruption. In obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a part of the body blocks the airway, like your tongue or a part of the throat. In central sleep apnea, it is actually the brain that causes the lungs not to function properly, interrupting a person’s breathing reflex.

 

What is hypopnea?

Hypopnea, on the other hand, has been late to be discovered as a separate respiratory disorder. Hypopneas are previously considered and associated with obstructive sleep apnea or OSAs, but recent studies showed that there is a difference between the two conditions. Hypopnea then gained the distinction of being a sleep respiratory condition where a ‘decrease of airflow for at least 10 seconds in respiration, a 30-percent reduction in ventilation, and a decrease in oxygen saturation’, according to a study by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

 

The difference between apnea and hypopnea

The main difference is the amount of blockage a patient would have in both scenarios. For sleep apnea, complete blockage of air and sudden stoppage in breathing occurs during sleep. On the other hand, a patient with hypopnea still has room for oxygen, though little, because there is an incomplete blockage of air. With that said, more often than not, patients with one of these sleep respiratory conditions also have the other. This means that if you are diagnosed to have sleep apnea, it is very possible that upon examination, or a sleep study, your sleep specialist will find out that you also have hypopnea at the same time, and vice versa. What is important is that these two sleep[ disorders get addressed and treated so that future more serious complications are prevented.

 

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