Sleep apnea and related disorders.

This article has ranged far and wide, from the pickwickian patient weighing 500 pounds to the tiny 4-lb premature baby, but the common thread is cessation or diminution of breathing during sleep and consequent oxygen desaturation. Associations have been made between abnormalities of sleep and breathing and multiple diseases--some causative and some fortuitous. Despite relating this information, we are only beginning to understand sleep and breathing. Although we spend a third of our lives asleep, very little attention was paid to the study of sleep until the mid 1970s. Even to this day, there is little interest in snoring and its adverse effects. The situation may be a sexist one in which men have done the research and the snoring, but the snoring has bothered only women. I predict that the next 15 years will see a vast increase both in studies of sleep and in our understanding of the importance of breathing during sleep--to the well-being of all of us.