Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology
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J Clin Exp Neuropsychol · Apr 1996
Cognitive function in patients with sleep apnea after acute nocturnal nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment: sleepiness and hypoxemia effects.
Patients with sleep apnea are typically hypersomnolent during the daytime and may demonstrate higher order cognitive dysfunction. A persistent problem in interpreting impaired neuropsychological test performance in such patients is whether the observed deficits can be explained wholly by impaired vigilance. We examined 37 sleep apnea patients prior to and immediately subsequent to successful sleep apnea treatment with nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). ⋯ Thus, performance on the recall trial of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test increased from pre-CPAP to post-CPAP for the increased alertness group but decreased significantly for the decreased alertness group. On the Wilkinson Addition Test, non-hypoxemic patients showed statistically significant improvement in problems correctly solved from pre-CPAP to post-CPAP, but the hypoxemic patients showed only a marginal increase. These results are compatible with other studies suggesting that patients having sleep apnea may incur deficits as a result of both decreased vigilance and hypoxemia, and that at least some of these deficits are immediately reversible.