Device: Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP)
Patients diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) will be offered standard of care treatment of CPAP (patients given oral appliances for OSA are excluded from our study). Note: our study is a survey-based and observational study following patients who are being evaluated for sleep disorders. Those patients diagnosed with OSA would be offered CPAP or possibly an oral appliance regardless of whether they are entered into our study or not.

There is a well-documented but poorly understood relationship between headache disorders (e.g. migraine, cluster headaches, awakening headaches, etc.) and sleep disorders. The exact prevalence of patients with concomitant headache disorder and sleep disorder is not even known. Hypotheses surrounding the relationship include low overnight oxygen saturation and/or hypercarbia in the case of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) with awakening headache, primary headache disorder as a contributor to secondary sleep disorder, atypical lengths or percentages of time in various sleep stages resulting in disordered sleep patterns and subsequent headache, bruxism causing tension type headaches, among others. Our review of the literature shows there has not yet been a prospective trial evaluating headache disorders and concomitant sleep disorders with attempts to find vagaries or abnormalities in terms of sleep parameters as a way to explain headache disorder.

Additionally, although there have been few retrospective reviews of small numbers of patients examining an intervention (in this case, the addition of continuous positive airway pressure - CPAP) as a means to correct a sleep disorder with a subsequent evaluation of the patient's pre-existing headache disorders, there has yet to be a prospective trial evaluating same. Our team identified at least one retrospective study that would suggest that treating OSA with standard of care CPAP improved pre-existing symptoms of headache.

Our study proposes to - after obtaining consent - survey patients with suspected sleep disorders who have been scheduled for a sleep study to evaluate the overall prevalence of headache disorder among this particular population. We would then evaluate various standard sleep study parameters such as lowest oxygen saturation, time in various sleep stages, sleep latency, total sleep time, respiratory disturbance index, presence of bruxism, and so on, to see whether there is a correlation between certain of these parameters and a particular headache disorder. We also would survey those patients diagnosed with OSA following institution of CPAP to see whether there was a decrement or cessation in headache frequency or intensity.

Being that a significant proportion of our patients are returning war veterans with possible traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder, we would also query patients regarding the presence of these disorders. These data would be taken into account as a sub-analysis of the overall data set.

The study will be of 12 months duration. Over 2000 sleep studies are performed at our institution in 12 months. We anticipate an enrollment of between 400 to 800 subjects.