Therapeutical options for the treatment of Cheyne-Stokes respiration.

The awareness of Cheyne-Stokes respiration (CSR) and of the co-existence of the obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome and central breathing disturbances has rapidly grown in recent years. CSR is defined by a waxing and waning pattern of the breathing amplitude. Sleep related breathing disorders in patients with heart failure are associated with impaired clinical outcome and survival. While continuous positive airway pressure treatment (CPAP) is widely used to treat CSR, it has failed to improve overall survival of heart failure patients. Nevertheless, it has been shown that CPAP reduces mortality if breathing disturbances were sufficiently eliminated. Therefore, optimal suppression of CSR is critical. While CPAP reduces CSR by 50% on average, adaptive servoventilation (ASV) normalises CSR in most patients. ASV devices apply different levels of pressure support: during periods of hypoventilation the inspiratory pressure is increased while it is reduced to the lowest possible level during hyperventilation. The devices deliver an expiratory pressure to overcome upper airways obstruction. Pressure support is defined by the difference between expiratory and inspiratory pressure. Thus, while pressure support is fixed in bilevel devices, it varies under ASV. However, the hypothesis that ASV might improve survival in CSR patients has to be proved in prospective studies in CPAP nonresponders. There is a lack of evidence on the use of bilevel devices in CSR. However, ASV has proven both to effectively treat CSR and to be superior to CPAP in respiratory and sleep parameters in short term and medium term studies. Nevertheless, data on the long term use and the influence on cardiac parameters are necessary.