Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common condition that causes brief, repeated pauses in breathing throughout the night as you sleep. OSA is linked to several serious health problems, including difficulties with thinking and memory, depression, car crashes, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Having OSA can also cause a decline in quality of life.

Until now, researchers have not explored on a national scale how many older adults may be at risk for OSA, or how often health-care providers evaluate and treat the condition in older people. Recently, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan designed a first-of-its-kind study to answer those questions. Their work was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The researchers studied information from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a survey of Medicare beneficiaries that assesses the impact of aging on health and well-being. Funded by the National Institute on Aging, NHATS has conducted five annual face-to-face interviews in older adults’ homes since 2011. The NHATS research team has collected detailed information about participants’ health, physical and mental capabilities, living conditions, daily activities, and social support. In 2013, NHATS interviews also asked beneficiaries questions about sleep disturbances and symptoms of sleep apnea. Many of the NHATS sleep questions resembled questions from a common sleep apnea screening questionnaire known as the “STOP-Bang” questionnaire, which got its name from the symptoms it assesses: snoring, tiredness, observed apneas (pauses in breathing), high blood pressure, BMI, age, neck circumference, and gender.

Among the 1,052 older adults who participated in the NHATS sleep disturbance survey (a number which represents 7,082,963 beneficiaries in the Medicare population), 56% were considered at risk for OSA, based on the number of adapted STOP-Bang questions that participants endorsed.

Despite the large number of older adults found to be at risk for OSA, only 8% had been evaluated for it with a sleep study (a test used to diagnose sleep apnea and other sleep disorders). Of those who did receive a sleep study, 94% were diagnosed with OSA, and 82% were prescribed treatment with positive airway pressure (PAP) equipment. PAP therapy is the primary treatment for OSA which, through a mask, blows air into the airway to help people keep their airways open as they sleep to reduce pauses in breathing.