As the first clinical post for this new blog, I thought I would start with the basics: what is “Obstructive Sleep Apnea” (OSA)? The answer is simple, but it’s also complicated.

In brief, OSA is a common medical condition (one study found that as many as 24% of adult men and 9% of adult women have it) that occurs during sleep where there are recurrent disruptions in sleep due to partial (“hypopnea”) or complete (“apnea”) obstructions of the upper airway. Continue reading →