Cardiovascular Morbidity and Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Obstructive sleep apnea, a relatively common disorder in adults, is characterized by sleep-related periodic breathing, upper-airway obstruction and asphyxia, sleep disruption, and acute autonomic, arterial, and hemodynamic perturbations. Epidemiologic data show a strong association between untreated obstructive sleep apnea and incident cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.1,2 It is implicit that obstructive sleep apnea causes or propagates adverse cardiovascular outcomes and that its treatment may have a mitigating effect, and there are numerous instances in which explicit data have documented the efficacy of the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea in preventing or attenuating such outcomes. However, obstructive sleep apnea is typically . . .