Here are some common symptoms of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS):
1. Snoring
Patients with sleep-disordered breathing also have varying degrees of snoring. However, patients themselves often do not know they snoring, most of them were told by the same sleeping room people. There are also patients snore occasionally suddenly woke up to hear their own snoring. Snoring uneven, and from time to time pause, a few seconds or even minutes later, it suddenly broke out, causing loud sound which may up to 85 dB.
2. Apnea
Normal sleep may also appear central apnea, but should be less than 10 times in 7h sleep. Usually only appears in the REM period, mostly in obese people or snorers. Pathological apnea is a pause lasted 10s and above and up to 30 times or more in 7 hours. To mild OSAS, Apnea did not happen at eary sleep time, with the deepening of sleep, snoring increases, with the emergence of apnea. However, in severe cases, apnea happened when began to go to sleep.
Apnea mainly happened in inhaling air, with the snoring stoped breathing interrupted. Patients with obstructive sleep apnea is still breathing at this time, accompanied by increased faster frequencies and amplitude shallowing of the chest or abdominal breathing movements and Chang combined mandibular movement, but there is no airflow through the nose and mouth and out. This situation continued to ten seconds to a few minutes later, with a deep-breathing, patients rapid breathing in order to compensate apnea oxygen debt owed. After a period of varying length of time, the next apnea occurs.
The time between the two pause related to the severity degree of the patient’s condition. Mild patines were the interval longer, and severe illness who would be relatively short interval of time. Some apnea patients accompanied with irregular twitching limbs, particularly for the lower extremity, which is called restless leg syndrome.
3. Polyuria or enuresis
Polyuria is the increase in the number of urination at night . This may be related to OSAS patients with night-time hypoxia, anaerobic metabolism also increase the excretion of uric acid. Night-time bed-wetting is more common in child patients with OSAS, but also exist in the adult.
4. Daytime sleepiness
Patients with varying degrees of daytime sleepiness, especially the quiet and not move or engage in monotonous, repetitive work, such as sit-ins, travel, reading, watching television. In severe cases, stand, walk, eat or even riding a bike, they could go to sleep.
5. Dizziness, fatigue, early morning headache, cognitive decline
OSAS in patients with sleep at night due to structural disorder and the increase in the proportion of light sleep to reduce the proportion of deep sleep, as well as the influence of factors such nighttime hypoxia, sleep after the patient’s physical strength and energy are not very good recovery, often complained early morning headaches, head faint, malaise, and manifestations of cognitive decline. The performance of cognitive dysfunction in memory, judge, attention, concentration, abstract reasoning ability and alertness. Normal sleep architecture disorders can cause cognitive decline; while the frequency of awakening at night in patients with OSAS, Ⅲ, Ⅳ period of sleep duration and the availability of, REM period duration and the time will affect the patient’s cognitive function. Studies show that hypoxemia in patients with OSAS than those without hypoxemia in OSAS patients with cognitive impairment is more obvious, the degree of cognitive impairment in patients with nocturnal oxygen saturation and partial pressure of oxygen during the day was significantly relevance.
6. Personality changes and psychotic symptoms
Reflected in brash, depression, anxiety and so on. May be related to the long night disorders hypoxia and sleep architecture in patients . Depression is the most prevalent OSAS psychiatric symptoms, at the same time with OSAS and narcolepsy, and restless leg syndrome patients, depressive symptoms become more pronounced. The more severe illness, the more depressive symptoms. Many OSAS patients have hallucinations occur, especially before going to sleep, or patients fight against sleepy.
There are also individual patients, the performance of a simple model paranoid psychosis, manic psychosis and so on. Abnormal behavior is not uncommon, such as sleep or tamper with hands and feet, and sometimes there sleepwalking phenomenon. During the work time, often appear absence seizures, or even suspected of psychomotor epilepsy, in essence it is just take a nap attack. Sudden suspicion, jealousy and other irrational behavior, is often considered a mental illness.Psychological symptoms of OSAS as an accompanying symptom, often with the improvement of the disease also will be reducing.
7. Hypertension
The incidence of hypertension in patients with higher reported as 25% to 96% range. In hypertensive patients, about 30% of the combined OSAS. The impact of OSAS on blood pressure often has the following characteristics: the peak of hypertension in general tend to fatigue the day after the afternoon or evening. After a night’s rest, the next morning blood pressure in general is relatively low. However, hypertension related to OSAS is not the some, due to overnight hypoxia, carbon dioxide retention, as well as changes in sleep structure, its early morning blood pressure, but higher than in the afternoon or evening. And the right response to antihypertensive drugs are relatively poor.