Telemedicine in sleep-related breathing disorders and treatment with positive airway pressure devices. Learnings from SARS-CoV-2 pandemic times

Abstract

The healthcare system currently faces new challenges, which are to be addressed by finding efficient alternatives. Such factors as the growth of world population, the increase in longevity, and the fact that some diseases which used to be deadly diseases have turned into chronic pathologies, cause the number of people in need for continuous medical care to rise. This results in a healthcare system crisis, which searches for solutions as telemedicine to address the needs of patients and control excessive medical spending. Telemedicine means remote medical assistance delivered by means of technological resources, which streamline the provision of medical care, thus increasing patient’s access to healthcare and saving time and costs. As regards respiratory diseases, telemedicine is a tool that may provide for proper prevention, diagnosis, therapeutic education, monitoring of observance, and therapeutic efficacy, as well as for the early detection of exacerbations. Patients suffering from sleep-related respiratory disorders in need for positive airway pressure devices may be benefited by telemedicine to enhance positive pressure adherence and follow-up to treat their pathologies, thus providing for the delivery of remote care and follow-up, reducing costs, and increasing the chances of receiving attention from specialists in patients who live a long distance from such medical facilities. However, it is a challenging task to find a balance in the doctor-patient virtual relationship.

Keywords

• sleep apnea
• obstructive
• continuous positive airway pressure
• non-invasive ventilation
• telemonitoring
• polysomnography
• telemedicine