Sleep Apnea

Progress continues in the refinement of historical and physical examination findings predictive of sleep-disordered breathing. Home monitoring is becoming more widely accepted and validated. The most significant development in the diagnosis of sleep-disordered breathing this year was the American Academy of Sleep Medicine's report on "Recommendations for syndrome definition and measurement techniques in clinical research." In this report, hypopnea and respiratory effort related arousal are defined, and the term obstructive sleep apnea is appropriately changed to obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome. Because of the importance of this report, we discuss the recommendations in detail.