Prevalence Of Sleep-Disordered Breathing
Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), which includes and is often referred to as sleep apnea , is very common among adult populations. The HypnoLaus study conducted in Switzerland in 2015 looked at polysomnography (sleep study) data from 2121 people over 40 years old, equally split between male and female and found the prevalence of moderate to severe SDB to be 23.4% in women and 49.7% in men. Similarly, the Sao Paulo Epidemiologic Sleep Study from 2007, looking at data from 1042 people between the ages of 20-80, found the prevalence of moderate to severe SDB to be 30.5% in women and 46.6% in men. Similar studies conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s estimated the prevalence of SDB to be between 6.5% and 9% in women and between 17% and 31% in men. There are two main reasons for the increase in prevalence of the disorder since these studies 30 years ago; (1) there has been a well-documented increase in world-wide obesity since 1990 which is known to increase the likelihood and s...