A plenary session will discuss sleep and Alzheimer’s disease. Blues Night will be a tribute to Bill Dement, MD, PhD.

Virtual SLEEP 2020, the 34th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS), is Aug 27-30, 2020, in a new online-only format. The meeting has live-streamed content as well as on-demand recorded sessions to view even after the conference ends.

The Virtual SLEEP 2020 scientific program begins with the plenary session on Thursday evening, Aug 27. The general sessions include abstract presentations, symposia, clinical workshops, and discussion groups on topics ranging from artificial intelligence and wearable technology to health disparities and sleep analytics. Clinical sleep specialists will discuss current practices in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders such as insomnia, obstructive sleep apnea, and narcolepsy. Download the Virtual Sleep Guide for complete details.

E-poster presentations will be on display 24-hours a day from Aug 28-30, available on-demand. The Virtual SLEEP 2020 exhibit hall will be open starting on Aug 28. Attendees can access the exhibit hall through Aug. 1, 2021.

Highlights include:

1. The unofficial kickoff starts

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Lower socioeconomic status and comorbidities are independent risk factors for nonadherence to continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy, according to a large study of older Medicare patients.

“[The] present results represent the largest study to date of rates and predictors of CPAP adherence among older adults in the United States. In our national sample of Medicare beneficiaries, adherence rates were generally lower than previously reported in smaller, clinic-based studies,” Emerson M. Wickwire, PhD, of the Sleep Disorders Center and division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and colleagues wrote in Sleep.

Dr. Wickwire and colleagues estimated CPAP machine adherence using a 5% sample of Medicare claims data, identifying 3,229 Medicare beneficiaries with OSA who began CPAP therapy between 2009 and 2011. Individuals in the sample were aged at least 65 years with a new diagnosis of OSA, 88.1% of beneficiaries were white, and 52.3% were male.

The researchers applied objective adherence criteria set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which defines CPAP adherence as a patient using CPAP for at least

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The burden of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) improved more in patients who received upper airway stimulation (UAS) compared with those who did not, according to research published in Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

Investigators conducted a prospective, parallel-arm, multinational, experimental study (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02907398) to compare OSA measures and patient-reported outcomes in individuals who received approval for UAS (n=230; therapy arm) vs those who received an insurance denial (n=100; no-therapy arm or comparator arm). The study was conducted at 9 academic medical centers — 6 in the United States and 3 in Germany — between October 2017 and January 2019.

The primary study end point was posttreatment apnea hypopnea index (AHI) and Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) at final follow-up in both the therapy and the comparator arms. Secondary end points included a comparison of the Functional Outcomes of Sleep Questionnaire (FOSQ-10) and Clinical Global Impression between the 2 groups at the final visit.

Get the full story at pulmonaryadvisor.com.

from Sleep Review https://www.sleepreviewmag.com/sleep-treatments/therapy-devices/upper-airway-stimulation-sleep-apnea/…

Have you considered diagnosing and managing sleep apnea patients who live hours away by letting an HST vendor handle some of the work?

By Lindsey Nolen

Assigning certain aspects of your home sleep testing (HST) program to a vendor with logistical expertise makes sense in some scenarios. After all, ensuring that the needed single-use items accompany the device and navigating the back-and-forth of the HST and its data can become an inefficient use of resources. During the pandemic in particular, outsourced mail-order HST has become a lifeline for patients and providers.

Some sleep care providers are finding that outsourcing HST logistics—which can include everything from mailing devices, patient education, on up to scoring and analysis—can have benefits beyond increased efficiency. They are using mail-order HST to grow their patient bases beyond their facility’s geographic area—diagnosing and treating people with sleep apnea they could not have reached otherwise.

“Reaching out to underserved populations, like rural areas, is clearly is a worthwhile pursuit,” says Hani Kayyali, CEO at CleveMed, which offers the SleepView Direct mail-order program. “Reaching out to affluent areas …

Medical device manufacturer Fisher & Paykel recently launched the F&P’s myMask App to guide sleep apnea patients who are new to CPAP therapy through the initial set-up process.

The smartphone app, now available on iOS and Android devices, is a resource for patients on understating how to get started on therapy, how to adjust the mask, and how to properly clean their CPAP equipment.

For every step of the initial set-up, there are short video clips to help patients through the initial steps.

“Patients don’t need to read, memorize instructions or try to vaguely recollect what the RT/clinical staff have told them in their telehealth video appointment. They can simply refer to the app as and when they need,” says Subbarao Potharaju, director of marketing at Fisher & Paykel.

from Sleep Review https://www.sleepreviewmag.com/sleep-treatments/therapy-devices/cpap-pap-devices/fisher-paykel-mymask-app-cpap/…

As part of the Coalition Innovation Santé – Crise Sanitaire initiative, Chronolife and Servier are collaborating to accelerate the deployment of a noninvasive telemonitoring solution which aims to facilitate remote monitoring of chronic patients during the COVID-19 pandemic and enable healthcare professionals to provide better patient care.

Due to high hospital bed occupancy rates in intensive care units, usual monitoring of vulnerable patients with chronic diseases is more difficult. To improve patient care, medical devices using trackers, blood pressure monitors, thermometers, and scales are often used to improve disease management, allowing for better long-term monitoring, and reduced avoidable re-hospitalizations. However, their constraints often result in problems with patient compliance.

So Paris, France-based Chronolife has developed a smart t-shirt integrating multiple sensors and a smartphone application for the remote monitoring of patients. Keesense is a medical device marked CE Class IIa that allows for the continuous monitoring of 6 physiological parameters (electrocardiogram, physical activity, abdominal and thoracic breathing, skin temperature, and pulmonary impedance to detect edemas). Chronolife expects to receive FDA clearance for its Keesense solution by next year (2021), to …

By Sree Roy

A major challenge for the sleep medicine subspecialty is the huge number of people who are unaware that they have sleep apnea. Meanwhile, people with undiagnosed sleep apnea are frequently weighed down by the sleep disorder’s daytime symptoms and/or comorbidities, without realizing that efficacious treatments are available, if only they knew to seek them out. In the communities of central Pennsylvania and northern Maryland, integrated health system WellSpan Health has made a sizable dent in the number of undiagnosed cases.

WellSpan sleep program director asked about creating an online screening tool for sleep apnea after taking a WellSpan-created risk assessment for breast cancer screening. “I reached out to marketing, and we moved forward from there,” says program director Tammy Sterner, RN, BSN, MEd, NE-BC. “A web designer internal to WellSpan developed the concept.”

Sterner hoped the health risk assessment would create public awareness, information, and demographic data, and most importantly provide people with a starting point to have conversations with their primary care physician (PCP) about sleep. Since May of 2019, 2,082 people have completed the online …

New research shows a correlation between poor sleep in TBI patients and elevated markers of neuronal injury.

By Lisa Spear

Could treating sleep disorders in traumatic brain injury patients lead to fewer cases of neurodegenerative disease down the road in this population? 

The answer to this question has not yet been determined, but new research shows that this hypothesis is worth exploring further. A recent abstract reveals elevated markers of neuronal injury and cognitive deficits accompanying sleep complaints and obstructive sleep apnea risk in veterans with traumatic brain injury. According to the authors, this possibly identifies treatable pathophysiological mediators for traumatic neurodegenerative progression, but further research is needed to confirm this theory. 

“If sleep is related, certainly that would be a good target for intervention to prevent progression,” says author neurologist and neuroscientist Kent Werner, MD, PhD.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) honored Werner for his work with the 2020 Trainee Investigator Award, which recognizes exceptional scientific discovery in the field of sleep medicine. 

“I do want to thank the AASM. I think they deserve recognition for …

How do you select an appropriate interface for a patient during the pandemic? Several innovative software options are available.

By Lisa Spear

Under normal circumstances, fitting a patient for a CPAP mask calls for an in-person visit. Measurements of the craniofacial anatomy are taken. A sleep tech or respiratory therapist (RT) asks a few questions. The process involves an investment in staffing, time, and a brick-and-mortar building. During these visits, staying at least 6 feet apart to minimize the risk of coronavirus spread is not always possible.

As SARS-CoV-2 took root across the country this spring and cases in the United States eclipsed other nations, more Americans opted to cancel or postpone non-emergency medical care, including visits to select CPAP masks. Home medical equipment (HME) storefronts shuttered, and suppliers scrambled to figure out a solution to continue to reach patients.

In the midst of all the chaos, some sleep medicine software developers innovated their way out of the problem—by developing technology to remotely recommend CPAP masks, without the need for sleep tech or RT in-person assistance. Philips Respironics launched its …