When I was working in a sleep lab (former life, I was working toward my RPsgT)
we had hundreds and hundreds of patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea. I can
see very few reasons for someone to be contraindicated for co-sleeping that has
OSA (treated or untreated). I only would caution that if the individual is SO
severe that their functioning is impaired because of the sleepiness. These
individuals have true OSA, but it is so severe that they function as if they
were under the influence of alcohol or some other depressant. We had a patient
that literally fell asleep while trying to take his pants off. This was not my
patient, but I had to stop working on my patient to go over and assist with
this patient since he was so exceedingly sleep deprived that he was literally
unable to stay awake. This patient ended up requiring a trach, but once he got
treatment he was a completely different person. BTW, the test that we did was
a stat transfer from another hospital because the staff at that hospital were
alarmed by his sleepiness. This degree is so extremely rare however, that in
over 30 combined years of experience in sleep medicine and related fields, none
of the staff at the lab had ever seen this degree of "daytime sleepiness".
OK, having said that, typically, OSA should not be seen as a contraindication
for co-sleeping IMO. I have seen sleep disorders that it should be, a REM
Behaviour disorder would be one, we had a patient that also is a friend of my
family, that I performed a test on, he has included in his diagnosis, RBD. The
disorder first manifested when he began crawling around his bedroom barking
like a dog. Later, and far more frightening, was when he attempted to strangle
his wife. the wife escaped with only some bruises around her neck, but
needless to say it was very frightening for both of them. IMHO, narcolepsy
might be a contraindication for co-sleeping just due to the nature of the
problem.
The woman falling asleep during labour sounds more like a case of narcolepsy
than OSA, but it is very common for all initial diagnoses of anything relating
to sleep to be referred to the lab as "OSA", there are a few reasons for this,
from what I have seen, primarily, insurance is a little easier on the referring
doc when the dx is OSA instead of narcolepsy or whatever, it is easier to
change the dx after conclusive testing than to fight with the insurance over if
testing is warranted in the first place. Second, many people just find it
easier to go with the dx of OSA for anything related to sleep simply because
without testing, it is impossible to determine what exactly the problem is, the
first patient that I described we were all convinced had a narcoleptic
component to his case, we were all wrong, it was straight forward OSA, albeit
at very severe case.
Vickie
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