On Feb. 13, 2008, passengers aboard a Go! flight in Hawaii never realized how lucky they were when the plane landed in one piece. Both the pilot and co-pilot fell asleep while the plane was aloft and actually flew 26 miles past its landing site, the airport at Hilo.
“The captain and first officer inadvertently [fell] asleep during the cruise phase of flight,” noted the National Transportation Safety Board in its final report. Fortunately for all aboard, the jet carried extra fuel for a return trip to Honolulu. That extra fuel came in handy when the pilots awake and learned they had flown past the runway — and airport.
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A video imaging technique demonstrates that the soft palate, the tissue at the back of the roof of the mouth, is more elongated and angled in patients with obstructive sleep apnea both when they sleep and when they are awake, according to a recently published report.
“Obstructive sleep apnea is a common form of sleep-breathing disorder characterized by repetitive episodes of partial or complete upper airway obstruction,” the authors wrote in the article. The condition usually causes breaks in sleeping, reduced blood oxygen levels and daytime sleepiness, and may contribute to cognitive (thinking, learning and memory) difficulties, psychosocial impairments, trouble driving, heart disease and death.
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Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment seems to improve cognitive functioning in patients with Alzheimer’s disease who also suffer from obstructive sleep apnea, according to the results of a randomized clinical trial conducted at the University of California, San Diego.
The study led by Sonia Ancoli-Israel, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and one of the nation’s preeminent experts in the field of sleep disorders and sleep research in aging populations was published in the November 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
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