History of Sleep Apnea

A Historical Overview of Sleep Apnea

Sir William Olser in 1918 first used a term he invented, "Pickwickian", to describe patients who were both obese and hypersomnolent. Olser was obviously a reader of Charles Dickens as the Dickens novel Pickwick Papers had a character in it that was similar to the patients he had identified with these common symptoms. Around 1956, Dr. Burwell was treating patients who often had congestive heart failure, extreme sleepiness or fatigue, as well as improper airflow to the lungs; or respiratory failure. He termed these types of patients as having Pickwickian Syndrome.

Early Diagnosis and Treatment

In 1965 a group of French and German doctors lead by Dr. Gastaut started doing research on what is now called Obstructive Sleep Apnea, and recorded breathing and sleeping patterns of a patient with Pickwickian Syndrome and discovered distinctively unique patterns of the 3 types of apneas.

Beginning in 1969 OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea) was often treated with a tracheostomy; bypassing the upper air passage altogether by creating an incision or opening in the trachea (windpipe) and inserting a breathing tube.

Invention of the CPAP machine

In 1981, an Australian researcher by the name of Dr. Colin Sullivan and his colleagues Berthon-Jones, Issa and Eves, introduced their findings on the treatment of OSA with something called a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine, or CPAP. The treatment plan started off with a reversed vacuum cleaner motor that blew air into the afflicted person's nasal passage using a Silastic tubing to keep the airway open. The initial CPAP machines were large, bulky and noisy but by the late 1980s many improvements had been made to the machine and masks and soon this became the preferred method of treatment for those who suffer from Sleep Apnea. The publishing of their research papers was a landmark development in the treatment of Sleep Apnea.