All Np's who have knowledge of sleep apnea please help!

[rll28]

I am currently a nursing student and i'm about a 100% sure I have sleep apnea. I dont have any insurance or enough money to get a sleep study done or use CPAP machine. My grades have dropped lately and i am putting in the same study time. I can tell i am having a harder time concentrating on the material and having difficulty processing difficult test questions. My question is does anyone know if there is a proven direct correlation between sleep apnea and poor performance in school?

[sirI, MSN, APRN, NP]

Hello, rll28,

Yes, poor performance in any activity is quite common:

Excessive daytime sleepiness

• Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) is one of the most common and difficult symptoms that clinicians treat in patients with OSA. Patients do not always accurately describe their sleepiness on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale compared with objective measures. Nonetheless, EDS is one of the most debilitating symptoms because it reduces quality of life, it impairs daytime performance, and it causes neurocognitive deficits (eg, memory deficits).

Performance and neurocognitive deficits

• Partly because of their EDS, daytime functioning, intellectual capacity, memory, psychomotor vigilance (decreased attention and concentration), and motor coordination are substantially impaired in patients with OSA. Causes include both sleep fragmentation and hypoxemia due to OSA. Whether these causes can be reversed awaits study to determine the full answer.

Above is from an article from eMedicine http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic163.htm

If you have concerns, you need to contact your PCP and investigate this.

Good luck and hope that you can see your PCP.