Purpose: Comorbid insomnia often occurs in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), referred to as COMISA. Cortical arousals manifest as a common feature in both OSA and insomnia, often accompanied by elevated heart rate (HR). Our objective was to evaluate the heart rate response to nocturnal cortical arousals in patients with COMISA and patients with OSA alone.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study describes a computationally efficient algorithm for 4-class sleep staging based on cardiac activity and body movements. Using an accelerometer to calculate gross body movements and a reflective photoplethysmographic (PPG) sensor to determine interbeat intervals and a corresponding instantaneous heart rate signal, a neural network was trained to classify between wake, combined N1 and N2, N3 and REM sleep in epochs of 30 s. The classifier was validated on a hold-out set by comparing the output against manually scored sleep stages based on polysomnography (PSG).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objective: Life expectancy data of COPD patients in comparison to the general population are primarily based upon long-term population cohort studies. These studies are limited by a poor definition of clinically significant COPD. The key element in the course of COPD is a clinical exacerbation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Hepatopulmonary syndrome is a severe complication of liver disease, with greatly increased mortality. The syndrome is characterized by increased blood-flow, intrapulmonary vasodilatation and angiogenesis, leading to effects including the formation of shunts. This leads to a decrease in arterial oxygen pressure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: because of the increasing prevalence of diabetes, complications of diabetes will also become more prevalent. The pathophysiology of Charcot neuro-osteoarthropathy (Charcot disease) as a complication of diabetes is still enigmatic. As a consequence, the optimal diagnostic, follow-up, and therapeutic strategies are unclear.
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