Sleep History Taking and Examination

Abstract

Sleep is the essence of productive and a healthy life. This chapter provides a comprehensive outlook for patient assessment including sleep history taking, detailed examination through general assessment as well as sleep diary. Special focus has been laid upon common and useful questionnaires which are not only inexpensive but also validated to be used in sleep apnea patients. Sleep history needs to be corroborated from the bed partner along with detailed examination from the patient. It is important to conduct the physical examination which constitutes various parameters like BMI, neck circumference, upper airway examination, etc. Efficient sleep history serves as a good predictor of sleep apnea and should not be missed before a patient undergoes polysomnography test. Usage of sleep diary has been largely underplayed in general practice, but if administered correctly it provides key information about patient's sleep hygiene and practices. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and non-commercial reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.