How are you sleeping?
Bel Air inventor David Krausman has a device that can measure the quality of your sleep and identify potentially dangerous conditions like sleep apnea.
The DeSat Counter, about the size of a Palm Pilot, straps to a patient?s wrist. Using a disposable sensor attached to the index finger, the device measures vital statistics such as pulse, breathing and how much oxygen gets into the blood. And it goes home with you.
“People can be very symptomatic with sleep apnea when they?re at home,” Krausman said. “Then you get them into a sleep center and hook them up to all these wires and monitors and put them in a strange bed and expect them to sleep normally?”
The device contains a computer processor that analyzes the telltale interruptions in breathing that form sleep apnea. It records individual apnea events, flags incomplete data if the monitor is pulled off in the night, detects limb movements and can download data onto a physician?s computer for analysis.
People with sleep apnea stop breathing repeatedly during their sleep, according to the American Sleep Apnea Association Web page. Sometimes these interruptions come hundreds of times during the night and often last for a minute or longer.
