Work of Breathing in Fixed and Pressure Relief Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (C-Flex™): A post hoc Analysis.

Background: Expiratory pressure relief continuous positive airway pressure (pressure relief CPAP; C-Flex™) causes increases in inspiratory duty cycle and shortening of expiratory time. It has been suggested that these changes are caused by an increase in work of breathing.

Objectives: We studied the effects of C-Flex on work of breathing and intrinsic positive end-expiratory pressure as compared to fixed CPAP.

Detection of sleep disordered breathing by automated ECG analysis.

Sleep related breathing disorders are a highly prevalent disease associated with increased risk of cardiovascular complications like chronic arterial hypertension, myocardial infarction or stroke. Gold standard diagnostics (polysomnography) are complex and expensive; the need for simplified diagnostics is therefore obvious. As the ECG can be easily conducted during the night, the detection of sleep related breathing disorders by ECG analysis provides an easy and cheap approach.

C-Flex technology: effects on breathing parameters and inspiratory flow limitation.

Background: Expiratory pressure relief continuous positive airway pressure (pressure relief CPAP, C-Flex) is known to be as effective in the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) as conventional CPAP while improving overall patients' adherence. However, the effects of C-Flex on ventilation during sleep have not been studied yet.

Objective: This study investigates the effects of pressure relief CPAP on respiratory parameters and possible inspiratory flow limitation with increased difference between inspiratory and expiratory pressure compared with conventional CPAP.

Quantification of tonic and phasic muscle activity in REM sleep behavior disorder.

REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is characterized by excessive tone of the chin muscle and limb movement during sleep. In the past, quantification of increased muscle tone in REM sleep has been performed visually, using no stringent criteria. The aim of this study was to develop an automatic analysis, allowing the quantification of muscle activity and its amplitude for all sleep stages, with a focus on REM sleep in patients with RBD.

Sleep medicine as a scenario for medical grid application.

Sleep medicine is gaining more and more interest and importance both within medical research and clinical routine. The investigation of sleep and associated disorders requires the overnight acquisition of a huge amount of biosignal data derived from various sensors (polysomnographic recording) as well as consecutive time-consuming manual analysis (polysomnographic analysis). Therefore, the development of automatic analysis systems has become a major focus in sleep research in the recent years, resulting in the development of algorithms for the analysis of different biosignals (EEG, ECG, EMG, breathing signals).

Effect of nasal continuous positive airway pressure treatment on blood pressure in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.

Background: There is increasing evidence that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is an independent risk factor for arterial hypertension. Because there are no controlled studies showing a substantial effect of nasal continuous positive airway pressure (nCPAP) therapy on hypertension in OSA, the impact of treatment on cardiovascular sequelae has been questioned altogether. Therefore, we studied the effect of nCPAP on arterial hypertension in patients with OSA.