CPAP Blog

Together with the Transport Safety Group, Respironics UK published a website dedicated to raising awareness of the risks of driving whilst being chronically fatigued. Their OSA Online website links through to a BBC article which on its turn reveals even more scary news about deaths and injury caused by drivers falling asleep at the wheel. We bring you the bite size synopsis of this massive problem.

• 34% of drivers who drove more than 20,000 miles a year admitted they had fallen asleep at the wheel during the previous 12 months (source: RAC)
• Sleepiness is the cause of an estimated 20% of all accidents on motorways.
• Sleepy driving has statistically been proven to be as dangerous as drunk driving.

And according to the BBC’s stories:

• About one in six British HGV drivers suffers from a form of a sleep disorder requiring medical help.
• In January 2002, lorry driver Paul Couldridge was jailed for eight years and banned from driving for life after killing an engaged couple in a pile-up on the M20 in Kent. Maidstone Crown Court heard Couldridge had already been told by doctors to stop driving because he was suspected to be suffering from OSA.
• With an estimated 500,000 HGV drivers on Britain’s roads, if the OSA prevalence pattern was repeated across the UK, about 80,000 could need help.
• BBC Real Story reveals that some truckers who suspect they may have the condition are too frightened to come forward - because once a diagnosis is given, their HGV licence is suspended until they have been treated. In this time, they risk losing their job.
• The Road Haulage Association said that before anyone could train to become a commercial driver they were required to pass a rigorous medical examination. However, Real Story found that this did not include a test for OSA.
• Spoken to 1,000 drivers about driving after getting less than 5 hours sleep, 45% had put lives at risk by doing so, with 10% “tired driving” once a month. (BBC Link)
• Loughborough University Sleep Research Centre said its studies showed that drivers who had had five hours’ sleep had only a one in ten chance of staying fully awake on a lengthy journey.
• “If you risk getting behind the wheel not having had enough sleep you risk killing yourself and other innocent road users.”
• People with the medical condition sleep apnoea are particularly prone to dozing off and are thought to have a car accident rate 2-7 times higher others.

A study by the European Respiratory Journal, involving driving simulation, reports:

Before the treatment the apnoea drivers experienced 2.7 “accidents”, which included collisions with other vehicles or pedestrians or veering off the carriageway, and a further 12.4 lapses of concentration in the simulator.

After the CPAP treatment their accident rate fell to less than one and lapses of concentration to 4.9, on average.

When the researchers looked at the results of standard tools used to assess alertness and sleepiness - polysomnography and neuropsychological tests - they found such measures did not predict increased accident risk.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) says people with sleep apnoea must not drive unless they have satisfactory control of their symptoms which is confirmed by medical experts.

But with drivers who rely on their license to bring food on the table, you wonder how many own up to their sleeping problems.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence published a report regarding the current state of affairs in the UK regarding Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) for the treatment of Sleep Apnoea/ hypoapnoea Syndrome (OSAHS). In the document, they state the prevalence of OSAHS is approximately 4% in men aged 30-65 years and 2% in women of the same age. That’s well over half a million men and over 270K women based on the 2001 Census.

The report goes on to say that expert opinion estimates that approximately 20,000 of the probable 180,000 patients with OSAHS are using CPAP whilst they recognize CPAP as the only proven method of treatment. So if there are over three quarters of a million sufferers, of which just 180K are ‘patients’ and 20K CPAP users, that leaves well over half a million undiagnosed in the first place and 97% of all sufferers untreated! Makes you wonder how many of those even know they have sleep issues in the first place.

Undiagnosed: 76%

Untreated: 97%

That brings us to a whopping 160,000 confirmed patients plodding along under the weight of chronic sleep deprivation. Let’s not even think about how many of those roam the streets whilst sleepy at the wheel!

Those are quite alarming figures and with this blog and the cpap.co.uk website we hope to make the OSA future just that little bit brighter!