• J Clin Sleep Med · Apr 2006

    A national survey of the effect of sleep medicine specialists and American Academy of Sleep Medicine Accreditation on management of obstructive sleep apnea.

    • Sairam Parthasarathy, Patricia L Haynes, Rohit Budhiraja, Michael P Habib, and Stuart F Quan.
    • Southern Arizona Veterans Administration Health Care System, Tucson, AZ 85723, USA. spartha@arc.arizona.edu
    • J Clin Sleep Med. 2006 Apr 15;2(2):133-42.

    Study ObjectivesTo study the effect of American Academy of Sleep Medicine accreditation of sleep centers and sleep-medicine certification of physicians on the management of patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).DesignCross-sectional study.SettingNational web-based survey.PatientsSix hundred thirty-two patients with OSA.InterventionsNone.Measurements And ResultsSelf-reported data on details of whether patients with OSA were using positive airway pressure (PAP) devices, timeliness of the initiation of PAP therapy, and overall satisfaction of care received from physicians and centers. After adjusting for covariates, lack of accreditation or certification status of providers was independently associated with discontinuation of PAP therapy (odds ratio [OR] 1.9, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.1-3.2; p = .03). Patient education leading to perception of risk associated with OSA (OR 0.5, 95% CI, 0.2-0.9) and medications for nasal congestion (OR 0.3, 95% CI, 0.1-0.8) "protected" against discontinuation of PAP therapy, whereas nasal congestion (OR 1.6, 95% Cl, 1.0-2.4) increased the likelihood for discontinuation of PAP therapy. Certified physicians and accredited centers were more likely to educate their patients and received greater satisfaction ratings than non-certified physicians and nonaccredited centers (p < .05). Time delays in instituting PAP therapy were not influenced by accreditation or certification status, but such delays diminished patient satisfaction.ConclusionsIn this web-based survey, accreditation or certification status of sleep centers and physicians was associated with better indexes of clinical management in patients with OSA. Better patient education that fostered risk perception may have been partly responsible for such an association. Prospective studies designed to collect objective data regarding the effect of accreditation or certification status on outcomes in patients with OSA are still needed.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…