What data is collected during the sleep study?
There are thin electrodes placed on your scalp with paste, at the outer corner of each eye, and on your chin. These are used to determine whether you are awake or asleep, and what stage of sleep you are in.
Additional testing equipment includes elastic bands around your chest to measure your breathing effort, EKG pads on your chest to monitor your heart, and electrodes on your legs to monitor leg movements. You will also have a sensor on one finger to measure your blood oxygen level.
From this monitoring equipment physicians can see how your sleep cycles looked, and percentage of each sleep stage. Also can see if you had any sleep breathing or movement disorder, or other more rare sleep disorder.
Next blogpost we’ll talk about ways to be most comfortable during the overnight sleep test.