Sleep Disorder Screening Tool Aids Physicians
Sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome and insomnia are very common sleep disorders. A simplified sleep disorder screening tool has been developed to aid physicians in diagnosing these conditions in their office visits. This saves the physician and the sufferer an enormous amount of time, money and frustration. The sleep disorder screening tool will help doctors assess his patient for the specific disorder in minutes with only a few targeted questions.
This tool will help to identify millions of people who suffer from untreated sleep problems. Many sufferers go untreated and undiagnosed because the screening process has been too time consuming for the average doctor to administer during an office visit. The sleep disorder screening tool has come along at a very critical and important time in medical history.
40 Million Sufferers
The National Sleep Foundation has estimated that at least 40 million Americans suffer from a sleep disorder and at least 60 per cent of adults have never been asked about the quality of their sleep by a doctor. Sleep disorders are also associated with a broad range of medical complications such as heart disease, depression, highway and work related accidents. It is very important that a sleep disorder screening tool has been developed as adequate sleep is critical to good health. The questions on the sleep disorder screening tool range from general queries that relate to falling asleep, staying asleep to feeling rested.
More specifically, they ask if there have been any crawling feelings in the legs at night that went away if you moved a leg. How often do you have nightmares, do you scream, walk, punch or kick in your sleep? Specific questions are developed for certain disorders. One disorder, parasomnia, is a disorder that is suffered by sleepwalking, bedwetting, screaming and other abnormal sleep behaviors and can be screened with one single question. This sleep disorder screening tool has proven to be very effective and will only help with further diagnostic evaluation and treatment.
Sleep disorders are patterns of sleep that include difficulty falling and staying asleep, falling asleep at inappropriate times and abnormal behaviors associated with sleep, or in a disorder case, without sleep. These problems can be caused by medical or psychiatric problems, stress or poor sleeping environments. Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder. At least 51 per cent of adults experience insomnia at least a few nights per week and 81 million Americans suffer from sleep apnea. Restless leg syndrome is found in 25 per cent of Americans. The new sleep disorder screening tool can hopefully help to reduce these numbers.
Tags: insomnia