Sleep apnea is still not recognised by medical insurance companies: Dr Sumant Mantri

Shahid Akhter, editor, ETHealthworld spoke to Dr Sumant Mantri, Senior Consultant, Pulmonary & Sleep Medicine, Apollo Hospital, Bangalore to know about the prevalence of sleep apnea globally and why it needs recognition from every sector.


Sleep Apnea : Prevalence
Sleep Apnea is one of the subsets known as sleep-related breathing disorders. Globally, the earlier studies used to say that in females, it used to be 6-9% and in males, it was 10-15%, but the recent trends have shown that almost up to 17% of women and 34% of male population is affected with sleep apnea.

In Indian scenario, there are not many studies designed, but as per some available studies it is seen around 8% in females and 14% in males.

Sleep Medicine : Challenges
Lack of awareness about sleep medicine or sleep apnea syndrome amongst the general public as well as in medical fraternity is one of the major challenges.

Other challenges include lack of government policies for our commercial vehicular drivers or industrial workers such as to try and screen them for sleep apnea, so that road accidents can be avoided.

The topic of sleep apnea is not even included in the medical curriculum and there is also no specific emphasis on sleep medicine during graduation. Recently, it has been developed into the curriculum and has also been taught in various subspecialty, but it needs to increase over a period of time.

There is also a lack of trained sleep lab technicians, which needs to be increased because during the diagnosis part of it we need to monitor the patient and educate them about sleep studies.
Sleep Medicine : Way forward
There should be more educational programs and awareness about it and also changes in government policy. Most of the medical insurance companies are still not covering sleep apnea, as a kind of disease. There is also a lack of availability in health insurance for the diagnostic part of it as well as the treatment part of it. As more and more patients are getting diagnosed, so they have to self-fund for the treatment, which becomes sometimes difficult because of the cost involved.

Sleep Apnea : Latest Breakthrough
New diagnostic sleep machines are available now. The ideal would be Level 1, which we do in the hospital with full Polysomnography, but screening can be done at a person's home level. There are smaller devices which can be put under the pillow or can be attached with the wrist.

Sleep Apnea Apollo Hospital
We have a full-fledged sleep medicine program here and we do Polysomnography, multiple sleep latency tests. We have a multidisciplinary approach in our sleep clinic wherein, we include ENT specialist, psychiatrist, bariatric surgeons, collectively to do the treatment as a protocol to the patient.