A NEW specialist service at St Cross Hospital is helping to diagnose and treat the 20 per cent or more of the adult population who suffer from sleep disorders.
The hospital is now the first in Warwickshire, and one of only a handful in the country, to offer in-patient sleep services.
The new Sleep Studies unit helps treat conditions including sleep apnoea, narcolepsy, circadian rhythm sleep disorder and restless leg syndrome.
Patients stay overnight in one of two observation rooms while staff monitor their brain activity, breathing and heart rates while they sleep.
As well as treating patients, it is hoped the new unit can become a world-leading research centre to identify the causes of sleep disorders, and how to prevent them.
The unit was funded with £169,000 from University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust, plus an £80,000 donation from the Friends of St Cross charity for beds, equipment and support for the construction of the unit.
UHCW principal healthcare scientist Michelle Goodlad said: “If left untreated, sleep conditions can result in a growing number of health problems in addition to the well-publicised dangers of drivers falling asleep at the wheel and causing accidents.
“Until now, patients in Warwickshire had to wait up to a year for diagnosis at specialist centres in Birmingham, Leicester or Cambridge.
“We can now book patients in within a few weeks and are starting to make appointments for patients in the surrounding counties. We will shortly be joining a number of national research programmes and aim to be recognised as a national centre of excellence for sleep studies.”
Friends of St Cross chairman Willy Goldschmidt said: “In 2014 the Friends helped to bring outpatient Sleep Apnoea diagnostic services to St Cross. We supplied additional equipment for this service a year later and understand that there are now some 2,000 patients who have benefited from this service.
“We have been most pleased to support the expansion of the service which places St Cross at the centre of the country’s delivery of diagnosis and treatment of Sleep Disorders.”
