Advances in Positive Airway Pressure Treatment Modalities for Hypoventilation Syndromes.

RATIONALE: Positive airway pressure therapy for hypoventilation syndromes can significantly improve health-related quality of life (HR-QOL), healthcare costs, and even mortality. The sleep-disordered breathing in such individuals are quite complex and require sophisticated devices with algorithms that are designed to accurately detect and effectively treat respiratory events that includes hypoventilation, upper airway obstruction, lower airway obstruction, central apneas and central hypopneas and reduce the work of breathing while maintaining breathing comfort.

OBJECTIVES

The therapeutic physiological rationale for the various advanced PAP modalities and the details about the principles of operation and technology implementation are provided here.

CONCLUSIONS

The physiological rationale for advanced PAP modalities is sound considering the complexity of sleep-disordered breathing in patients with hypoventilation syndromes. Although such devices are increasingly used in clinical practice, the supporting clinical evidence - specifically comparative-effectiveness studies in real-life conditions -- needs to be performed. Moreover, there is much opportunity for further refining these devices that include the ability of the device to reliably monitor gas-exchange, sleep-wakefulness state, and for reducing variability in device efficacy due to provider-selected device-settings.