A small gadget diagnoses sleep apnea

Mikhail Romkin, Naked Science

In order to diagnose apnea, people are sent to sleep studies, also known as polysomnography. As part of the study, patients should spend the night in a medical facility under the supervision of numerous electrodes attached to the head. In addition, there are diagnostic devices that can be used at home, however they can be quite cumbersome. Now the developers from the startup Somnarus have presented a small gadget SomnaPatch, which can diagnose sleep apnea with high accuracy.

Created by a California startup, the gadget weighs less than 30 grams and consists of a disposable adhesive patch that attaches to the forehead and connects to a nose nozzle. When the patient falls asleep, sensors built into the gadget measure blood oxygen saturation, heart rate, respiratory effort, sleep duration and changes in body position.

As part of the efforts being made to obtain approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Somnarus conducted a study of the device in three American sleep clinics last year.  The study involved 174 patients, half of whom underwent standard polysomnography, and the rest used SomnaPatch. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the accuracy of the new gadget is 87.4 percent.

In addition, in a separate experiment that studied the convenience of using the gadget at home, it was found that 38 out of 39 users were able to use the device to record at least four hours of sleep, guided only by the attached instructions.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  08.06.2017