Sleep Report

Understanding your sleep report

Each sleep study performed by us includes a comprehensive, 3-page sleep study report that is sent to the referring doctor. The report covers:

• Patient details and history
• Sleep-related diagnoses with colour print-out
• Personalised treatment recommendations, based on up-to-date treatment guidelines and evidence based medicine
• Detailed sleep statistics
• Respiratory statistics, snoring volumes and oxygen saturation profile

Sleep study scoring

Every study is scored by our BRPT-registered senior staff, working to the standards set by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), the Australasian Sleep Association (ASA) and the Australasian Sleep Technologists Association (ASTA).

Legend for acronyms

Your report uses standard clinical terminology. This legend explains the terms you’ll see:

Arousal

A brief awakening from sleep, often triggered by a breathing event – frequent arousals fragment sleep quality.

BMI

Body Mass Index – a weight-to-height ratio used as a risk indicator for obstructive sleep apnoea.

CPAP

Continuous Positive Airway Pressure – the gold-standard therapy that keeps the airway open during sleep.

ESS

Epworth Sleepiness Scale – a validated questionnaire measuring daytime sleepiness.

Level 1

An overnight, in-laboratory sleep study attended by a sleep technician.

REM sleep

Rapid Eye Movement sleep – the dreaming stage; breathing events are often most severe here.

REM-latency

Time taken to reach the first period of REM sleep after falling asleep.

Sleep-latency

Time taken to fall asleep after lights out.

Sleep-related history

The clinical history relevant to your sleep – symptoms, medications and lifestyle factors.

Respiratory event types

The report identifies and classifies each respiratory event recorded overnight – obstructive, central and mixed apnoeas, hypopnoeas, and respiratory-effort-related arousals – so your doctor can see not just how often events occur, but what kind they are and when.

Central apnoea

≥90% reduction in peak thermal excursion from baseline, lasting at least 10 seconds; central apnoeas are associated with absence of inspiratory effort throughout the entire period of absent airflow.

Obstructive apnoea

≥90% reduction in peak thermal excursion from baseline, lasting at least 10 seconds; obstructive apnoeas are associated with continued or increased effort throughout the entire period of absent airflow.

Mixed apnoea

≥90% reduction in peak thermal excursion from baseline, lasting at least 10 seconds; mixed apnoeas are associated with absence of inspiratory effort at the start of the event, followed by return of inspiratory effort during the second portion of the event.

Hypopnoea

≥30% reduction in nasal pressure signal from baseline, lasting at least 10 seconds; hypopnoeas are associated with an oxygen desaturation of at least 3% and/or an EEG arousal.

RERA

Respiratory-effort-related arousal: a sequence of breaths lasting 10 seconds or more, with increasing respiratory effort or flattening of the nasal pressure signal leading to an EEG arousal during sleep (scored when the criteria for hypopnoea are not met).

AHI

Apnoea Hypopnoea Index, indicating the severity of sleep-disordered breathing: ≤5 normal; 6-14 mild; 15-29 moderate; ≥30 severe.

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