This paper presents a review on detection and treatment methods of sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is the most common type of breathing-related sleep disorder. It manifests in a variety of behaviours from teeth grinding to night terrors as involuntary night-time events. The most common sleep disorders are narcolepsy, hypersomnia, sleep talking, sleep walking, and bedwetting. Sleep apnea (somnipathy) is a serious sleep disorder that pauses breathing while sleeping. Breathing pauses occur 30 times or more during sleep and it lasts for few seconds to minutes, when normal breathing starts after this pause. Untreated sleep apnea patients stop breathing, which happens up to hundreds of times during sleep that ultimately results in atrial fibrillation, cardiac arousal, stroke, brain tumor and other vascular diseases at the age of 65 that causes death. Smokers are at a greater threat for sleep apnea. Several studies have suggested that a person who smokes more than two packs a day has 40 times the risk of sleep apnea then nonsmokers. This review includes the discussion about detection of sleep apnea from heart rate and respiratory events. The published literature of sleep apnea and methods of treatment are also discussed.
Keywords: Electrocardiogram; Heart rate analysis; Respiratory event.