PREVALENCE OF SLEEP APNEA IN A PRIMARY CARE CLINIC POPULATION

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This study will investigate the prevalence of sleep apnea in a primary care clinic population and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of different strategies for screening and diagnosing sleep apnea. The study will also measure health outcomes in patients with and without sleep apnea, before and after the diagnostic testing to determine the quality of life in the study patients at baseline and after being told of having sleep apnea. We will screen for sleep apnea in primary care clinic patients with a detailed health history questionnaire and pulse oximetry and evaluate the predictive accuracy of these screening tools using standard polysomnography as the reference standard. We will perform functional assessment of the study subjects with a detailed health outcomes assessment questionnaire to determine the quality of life and perceived health problems. We hypothesize that the prevalence of mild to moderate sleep apnea in patients seen in the care clinic setting will be higher than that of a community-based, healthy, employed adults. We hypothesize that patients with undiagnosed sleep apnea are more likely to be more frequent of the clinic compared to those without sleep apnea. We also hypothesize that patients with sleep apnea are more likely to score lower in quality of life measurements at baseline than without sleep apnea and also more likely to score lower than at baseline on repeat testing after they are being told of the diagnosis.