Home Sleep Studies Australia Pty Ltd

Valid reasons and indications for a sleep study may include any of the following: Snoring which disturbs your bed partner (or neighbours!) Always tired Falling asleep whilst driving Disturbed sleep Going to the bathroom during the night Waking up tired Waking up with a headache Waking up with a dry or sore throat High blood pressure (or on medication) Depressed (or on medication) Sexual dysfunction (or on medication) Thick, short neck (> 42 cm in men, > 38 cm in women) BMI > 30 kg/cm although about 10% of people with sleep apnea are “skinny” – they just have narrow airways. If you have any of the above symptoms, you may have sleep apnea which can be easily and quickly treated. The first step is to complete and send us the online Request Form.

All patients will be screened by a paediatric sleep physician before conducting our level 2 home-based sleep study. One of our sleep scientists will come to your home in the evening to set your child up with the monitoring device. In the morning, you bring the device into our office and the data is downloaded and analysed by a specialist paediatric sleep scientist. All results for our paediatric studies will be delivered during a one-on-one video consultation with the paediatric sleep physician. Our Paediatric Sleep Physician Dr Scott Burgess is a Paediatrician specialising in Respiratory and Sleep Medicine. He provides compassionate and high-quality care to the children with lung, breathing or sleep related problems. He co-founded Queensland Children’s Lung and Sleep Specialists, a specialist clinic bringing together highly experienced and qualified doctors and therapists, all with the vision of providing exceptional care when you need it most. Dr Burgess graduated from the University of Queensland. He also holds post graduate degrees in both sleep and respiratory medicine from the University of Western Australia including a PhD. He has four children of his own.

Sleep apnea (sleep-disordered breathing) is a serious and common sleep disorder affecting about 50% of men and 23% of women. Its name comes from a Greek word, apnea, meaning “without breath.” People with sleep apnea stop breathing hundreds of times during the night. The breathing pauses last at least 10 seconds, often dropping blood oxygen levels below 80%. The main symptoms of sleep apnea are persistent loud snoring at night and daytime sleepiness. Another symptom is frequent long pauses in breathing during sleep, followed by choking and gasping for breath. People with sleep apnea don’t get enough restful sleep, and their daytime performance is often seriously affected. Moderate to severe sleep apnea has been shown to increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, and stroke by 5 to 10 times normal. It can also cause people to grind their teeth at night and wake with a sore jaw and headaches. However, it can be diagnosed and treated.

Narcolepsy is a very rare sleep disorder with no known cause. It affects the body’s central nervous system, which is made up of nerves that carry messages from the brain to other parts of the body. When a person has narcolepsy, messages about when to sleep and when to be awake can get mixed up. This can cause a person to fall asleep when they do not want to, and often without any warning like feeling drowsy.

A person can have primary or secondary insomnia. Primary insomnia means that a person is having sleep problems that are not directly associated with any other health condition or problem. Secondary insomnia means that a person is having sleep problems because of something else, such as a health condition (like depression, heartburn, cancer, asthma, arthritis), pain, medication they are taking, or a substance they are using (like alcohol).

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) can affect children of any age as well as adults. In children, it is usually caused by enlarged tonsils or adenoids, which are both glands in the back of the throat. These glands can become enlarged due to inflammation, frequent infection or genetics. As in adults, children’s muscles relax during sleep which can mean the soft tissue in the upper airway partially or fully collapses, blocking the airway. If the airway is already partially blocked by enlarged glands, the airway is much more prone to obstructions during sleep. OSA is much less common in children than in adults; somewhere between 1-5% of all children have the condition. Obesity, like in adults, greatly increases the likelihood of developing OSA; around 60% of obese children have obstructive sleep apnoea. Other causes of OSA in children may be a recessed jaw, or overbite, certain shapes in the soft palette in the roof of the mouth, a large tongue or weakness in the tongue and throat muscles due to conditions such as down syndrome or cerebral palsy. Using sedatives or opioids or being around people who smoke can also contribute towards childhood OSA. Childhood central sleep apnoea (CSA) is extremely rare and is caused by issues with the breathing controls in the central nervous system, which is usually only associated with rare genetic disorders in children. CSA differs from OSA in that it is generally not associated with snoring and the pauses in breathing is caused by the lungs periodically stopping pumping.