Sleep Institute Marks First Decade

By Scott Welton, Standard Democrat
www.standard-democrat.com
SIKESTON - The Sleep Institute at Missouri Delta Medical Center is celebrating a decade of helping people wake up feeling rested. Polysomnography, or a sleep study, is used to figure out if a patient is suffering from sleep disorders and, if so, diagnose them. 

Around 2,500 different patients have come in for sleep studies at The Sleep Institute since it officially opened in January 2000, according to Jill Ortiz, Director of The Sleep Institute. 

“We watch people sleep and test for 63 different sleep disorders,” said Dr. Stephen Welton, Medical Director for The Sleep Institute. 

The two physicians trained in sleep medicine, Welton and Dr. S. Afraz Salahuddin, a neurologist, along with a staff of board-registered polysomnographic technologists, help patients with a wide variety of disorders.

“We’ve seen a little bit of everything in 10 years,”  Welton said.  Before working in The Sleep Institute, “I had no idea how bad a night’s sleep some people have.”

The two most common sleep disorders diagnosed are sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome, according to Sarah Gordon, a registered technician for The Sleep Institute.  It is estimated about 4% of the population suffer from sleep apnea, which ranges from shallow breathing during sleep to actual pauses in breathing.

“There are people who stop breathing several times a minute, Welton said.  He explained this can result in dangerously low oxygen levels.

For some suffering from restless leg syndrome, it’s like “running a marathon during the night,” he said.  “Some are moving their legs 100 times an hour or more.  And these aren’t just twitches, but significant leg movements.”

Bruxism, or teeth grinding, and acid reflux are also “very, very common,” Gordon said.

On the other hand, sleep disorders such as parasomnia, which is sleepwalking and night terrors, “are not as  frequent as you would think,” Welton said.

They are, however, real he said.  In an extreeme sleep disorder called REM behavior disorder, the person suffering may even execute complex tasks such  as driving a vehicle while completely asleep.

The brain is supposed to be disconnected from the body during sleep but sometimes id doesn’t work,” Welton said.

Welton said the idea for establishing a sleep lab came up during a conversation he and the late Dr. Edward Felker had.  Felker, who was an ear, nose and throat specialist, thought having access to this type of facility would be useful in  diagnosing many of his patients while Welton received some training in sleep disorders during the residency phase of medical school.

“We said, ‘We really need to have a sleep lab here,” Welton recalled.  The physicians pitched the idea to the hospital’s administration and got the green light, although Felker died before it opened.

Welton said they were nearing completion on the sleep lab facility when they decided additional training was needed so he and the staff made up of respiratory therapists went to Birmingham, AL, for specialized training.

That training has proved to be worthwhile.  Welton said it is very common for those suffering from a sleep disorder to have several disorders that have no discernible common cause.  For example, before moving to the area, Vickie Johnson of Dexter was already diagnosed with sleep apnea at a hospital in Illinois and was treating the condition with what Welton describes as “the gold standard” therapy for sleep apnea: continuous positive airway pressure.

“Then I started having some symptoms I had never had before,” Johnson said.  “I was awake and knew what was happening but couldn’t speak or move or do anything.”

So in the fall of 2009, she came to The Sleep Institute “and they did a study with me using the CPAP,” she recalled.  It was then determined the machine needed to be recalibrated to a higher setting.

Johnson said while this helped, she found she was still suffering from “extreme fatigue all the time.”  After another sleep study at MDMC in January, they discovered Johnson was also suffering from hypersomnolence, a condition similar to  narcolepsy in which the person is frequently sleepy.

“A person could be in the middle of a conversation and just fall asleep,” she said.  “They referred me back to my neurologist, Dr. (Riyadh) Tellow,” Johnson said. “This is now being rectified and that’s wonderful.”

Having had experience with more than one sleep lab, Johnson described the Sleep Institute’s staff as “more personal.  They talk to you more, explain things to you more.  The experience here  was 100 percent better.

“Our unofficial motto is, We’re not the biggest-we’re the best,” Welton said.  Our patient satisfaction is probably 99 percent,” Ortiz said.

“We do get compliments on how thorough we are and how fast we get the patients treated and taken care of,” said Crystal Calhoun, day technician for The Sleep Institute.  “Patinets are usually set up iwth their treatment within 24 hours.  We also follow up with our patients.”

“I am so grateful that Crystal got the ball rolling for me,”  Johnson said.

Welton said diagnosing and treating sleep disorders is important to a patient’s overall health.  “Sleep apnea increases the risk for high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke and heart attack,” he noted.

Vicki Pritchett, registered technician for The Sleep Institute, said most patients come to them because their husband or wife insists on it, however.  Ortiz said the bed partner questionnaire is one of the best tools for giving staff an idea of what to expect as the patient is almost always unconscious when the disoerders are affecting them.

National Sleep Awareness Week is March 7-13 this year, Ortiz noted, and MDMC will hold a sleep awareness workshop from 10:00am until 6:00pm on March 19 in the hosptial’s classroom area.

“We’re going to offer free information on all the sleep disorders,” she said.  Vendors will be at the workshop as well with samples and demonstrations of the latest sleep disorder treatment products.  Welton will be presenting on Restless Leg Syndrome at 11:00am and Sleep Apnea at 5:00pm that day.  For more information about the workshop, call The Sleep Institute at 472-7754.