{"id":26328,"date":"2019-11-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tmc.edu\/news\/2019\/11\/a-device-to-help-veterans-breathe-easier\/"},"modified":"2020-01-06T19:22:34","modified_gmt":"2020-01-06T19:22:34","slug":"a-device-to-help-veterans-breathe-easier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tmc.edu\/news\/2019\/11\/a-device-to-help-veterans-breathe-easier\/","title":{"rendered":"A device to help veterans breathe easier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Houston\u2019s VA is the first in the country to treat patients suffering from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mayoclinic.org\/diseases-conditions\/central-sleep-apnea\/symptoms-causes\/syc-20352109\">central sleep apnea<\/a> with an implanted device that regulates breathing muscles.<\/p>\n<p>The remed\u0113 System restores normal breathing patterns by stimulating a nerve that runs from the neck down to the diaphragm. Essentially a pacemaker for the lungs, the device treats the least common type of sleep apnea.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are two forms of sleep apnea: obstructive, which is the larger patient population, and central, which accounts for about 5 to 10 percent of the sleep apnea population,\u201d said Joshua A. Gonzalez, a spokesperson for Respicardia, the\u00a0company that manufactures the remed\u0113 system. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4549693\/\">Obstructive sleep apnea<\/a> occurs when throat muscles and soft tissue in the mouth relax, which narrows or blocks the airway enough to disrupt normal breathing patterns.<\/p>\n<p>Typically, this type of sleep apnea is treated with continuous positive airway pressure<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sleepresolutions.com\/blog\/what-is-a-cpap-machine-how-does-cpap-work\"> (CPAP)<\/a> machines and mouthpieces.<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, central sleep apnea occurs because the brain does not send the appropriate signals to the respiratory muscles. Those who suffer from this type of sleep apnea have few treatment options.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen they sleep, there is no nerve that stimulates the diaphragm, so there is no oxygen in and out of the lung,\u201d explained Hamid Afshar, M.D., a cardiologist at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houston.va.gov\">Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center<\/a>. \u201cThat is the reason why the oxygen drops.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The remed\u0113 System stimulates the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/topics\/veterinary-science-and-veterinary-medicine\/phrenic-nerve\">phrenic nerve<\/a> to send signals to the diaphragm to restore and regulate normal breathing patterns. Implanted by a cardiologist during a minimally invasive outpatient procedure, the system includes a battery-powered device placed under the skin in the upper chest area with two thin wires that attach to blood vessels\u2014one to deliver the therapy and the other to sense breathing.<\/p>\n<p>Veterans are four times more likely than members of the general public to suffer from some form of sleep apnea, according to the nonprofit National Sleep Foundation. Even so, some could be misdiagnosed because the symptoms are mistaken for a side effect of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), said Philip Gehrman, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Perelman School of Medicine and a member of the Penn Sleep Center and the Philadelphia VA Medical Center.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen people wake up out of an apnea, they are oftentimes gasping for air, their heart is racing and it is a surge of the fight or flight reflex,\u201d Gehrman said. \u201cPeople might interpret that as waking up from a nightmare\u2014because waking up from a nightmare would be similar. Once people are accurately diagnosed with sleep apnea, it will not make the PTSD go away, but it will improve the overall severity of their symptoms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gender and age are two factors that seem to support high rates of sleep apnea in veterans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you\u2019re looking at the veteran population, we know that being male increases your risk of sleep apnea and the veteran population is roughly 90 percent male,\u201d Gehrman said. \u201cIncreasing age is a significant risk factor and a large number of patients in the VA system are Vietnam-era veterans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Central sleep apnea often occurs among patients who are ill from chronic heart failure, stroke and other maladies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a cardiologist, when I look at it, we are treating people with central sleep apnea, but when we treat that, we are also treating a lot of overlapping congestive heart failure, overlapping atrial fibrillation, hypertension and more,\u201d Afshar said.<\/p>\n<p>The remed\u0113 system was approved by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fda.gov\/medical-devices\/recently-approved-devices\/remeder-system-p160039\">U.S. Food and Drug Administration<\/a>\u00a0in October 2017 and was introduced to the Houston VA this spring.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is personal to me to help veterans because they help our country stay safe,\u201d Afshar said. \u201cI think our veterans deserve the best.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Houston\u2019s VA is the first in the country to treat patients suffering from central sleep apnea with an implanted device that regulates breathing muscles. The remed\u0113 System restores normal breathing patterns by stimulating a nerve that runs from the neck down to the diaphragm. Essentially a pacemaker for the lungs, the device treats the least [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":26329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4240,4242,4241,4239,330],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A device to help veterans breathe easier - TMC News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A new device is allowing doctors to provide treatment for central sleep apnea. The remed\u0113 device is used in Houston&#039;s Michael E. 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