ABSTRACT
Sleepiness is a major problem for many patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). In fact, daytime sleepiness and tiredness are the most commonly reported presenting complaints of OSAS patients (1). Young and colleagues (2) reported that 2% of women and 4% of men in a middle-aged population had an apnea-hypopnea score of 5 or higher along with self-reported hypersomnolence. Lavie (3), in a survey of industrial workers in Israel, found that 40% of the subjects who reported daytime sleepiness had more than 5 apneas per sleep hour and 52% of respondents with daytime sleepiness had a history of work-related accidents as compared to 36% of respondents without self-reported daytime hypersomnolence. Findley and colleagues (4) estimated that patients with severe sleep apnea may have a sevenfold greater rate of driving accidents than subjects without sleep apnea.
