Last updated on April 28th, 2023 at 04:11 pm
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence published a report regarding the current state of affairs in the UK regarding Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) for the treatment of Sleep Apnoea/ hypoapnoea Syndrome (OSAHS). In the document, they state the prevalence of OSAHS is approximately 4% in men aged 30-65 years and 2% in women of the same age. That’s well over half a million men and over 270K women based on the 2001 Census.
The report goes on to say that expert opinion estimates that approximately 20,000 of the probable 180,000 patients with OSAHS are using CPAP whilst they recognize CPAP as the only proven method of treatment. So if there are over three quarters of a million sufferers, of which just 180K are ‘patients’ and 20K CPAP users, that leaves well over half a million undiagnosed in the first place and 97% of all sufferers untreated! Makes you wonder how many of those even know they have sleep issues in the first place.
Undiagnosed: 76%
Untreated: 97%
That brings us to a whopping 160,000 confirmed patients plodding along under the weight of chronic sleep deprivation. Let’s not even think about how many of those roam the streets whilst sleepy at the wheel!
Those are quite alarming figures and with this blog and the cpap.co.uk website we hope to make the OSA future just that little bit brighter!