A late-breaking abstract presented at the virtual European Respiratory Society (ERS) International Congress 2021, supported by ResMed, found that using positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy as directed can significantly increase sleep apnea patients’ chances of living longer, according to a news release.
The Alaska study, “CPAP Termination and All-Cause Mortality: a French Nationwide Database Analysis,” found that those with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) who continued PAP therapy were 39% more likely to survive than OSA patients who didn’t continue therapy.
Researchers evaluated more than 176,000 people in France with sleep apnea over a three-year period, finding that the survival rate gap remained significant when accounting for patient age, overall health, other pre-existing conditions and causes of death over the course of the study.
The study was conducted in partnership with professor Jean-Louis Pépin; universities of Grenoble, San Diego, and Sydney; Sêmeia; and other researchers from ResMed’s industry-academia collaboration medXcloud.
“Treating sleep apnea with PAP therapy may help you live longer; that’s the key takeaway here for people with sleep apnea and their doctors,” ResMed VP of medical affairs & study co-author Adam Benjafield said in the release. “This finding underscores how critical it is to identify the hundreds of millions of people worldwide whose sleep apnea is undiagnosed and untreated.”
