More room at hospital for sleep studies

Respiratory physiologist Sue Filsell wears a home sleep-monitoring kit as she attaches electrodes to Malin Dunroy to demonstrate sleep-monitoring equipment at the official opening of the revamped laboratory on the seventh floor of Dunedin Hospital. Photo by Linda Robertson.

The sleep lab has been expanded from a single room to two clinical rooms and is a shared facility between adult and paediatric sleep services.

The lab already had two bedrooms, each with a bed in it.

A new sleep data acquisition system has also been installed, which measures brain waves to record when the patient sleeps, breathing to record any sleep-disordered breathing, and leg muscle activity to record other disorders which can disturb sleep - all with synchronised video recording.

The sleep lab does about 200 sleep studies a year mainly dealing with sleep apnoea and other conditions which can disturb sleep, such as leg movement disorders.

The lab was officially opened with a Maori blessing and the cutting of a respiratory band, in place of a ribbon.