that helps them get a good night’s sleep might harm their health, says American Academy of Sleep Medicine President Dr. Raman Malhotra.
“Just me individually, I have hundreds of patients on these machines, and our sleep center alone has several thousand,” says Malhotra, an assistant professor of neurology in the sleep medicine section at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “Personally, I get somewhere in the 10 to 20 range calls a day. Our center gets over 100 a day.”
Last month, Phillips said they had shipped a total of more than 650,000 replacement devices to customers in the U.S. They aim to complete the repair and replacement program in the fourth quarter of 2022.
“We are working to address this issue as expeditiously as possible,” Philips said in the statement. “Given the number of devices currently in use (estimated at 3 to 4 million units globally based on production and shipment data – about half are in the U.S.)…”
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How sleep apnea affects sleep
As many as 25 million U.S. adults suffer from sleep apnea, according to the American Sleep Association, although many Blacks with sleep apnea go undiagnosed.
The condition occurs when muscles in the back of the throat relax and block the airway, stopping a person’s breathing and causing them to wake. This can happen more than 30 times an hour throughout the night, destroying a person’s ability to get good rest, the association says.
“There were times where I would literally fall asleep mid-sentence talking to someone because I was so exhausted from not going to sleep the night before,” sleep apnea patient James Colbert told CBS News in a report about the Philips recall.
CPAP machines improve sleep by pushing a steady stream of air into the patient’s nose and mouth, through a mask strapped onto the face. The constant air pressure keeps the airways open.
“As soon as you see a CPAP machine, you know it must really work, because no one would sleep with this stupid-looking thing if it didn’t work,” Feinsilver shares. “When I first broached the idea, everybody immediately says there’s no way I could sleep with this thing. Then they come back and say they can’t sleep without it.”
Doctors caught off guard
The recall caught sleep doctors by surprise.
“Unfortunately, Respironics said stop using your machine immediately and call your doctor, which is a big problem because