Newsletter Winter 2002

<%@LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%>

Welcome to the Sleep Clinic
Seed Implants Treat Prostate Cancer
Distinguished Physicians Awards
Welcome New Physicians and Clinicians

Welcome to the Sleep Clinic

A Sleep Clinic has come to Wenatchee Valley Medical Center. We’ve had the expertise here for quite some time, and now we have the facilities to diagnose sleep disorders in an overnight, hospital setting.

Pulmonologist Dr. David Daniel has been working with sleep-disorder patients since he came to the Clinic n 1992. Dr. Daniel trained at Stanford University’s Sleep Disorder Center where he served a Fellowship between 1990 and 1992. He returned to Stanford in 1997 for more training as he found himself doing more and more sleep studies.

“There’s a growing awareness of sleep disorders, and more people are wondering if there’s a treatable reason why they feel so terrible,” says Dr. Daniel. “I realized we needed to get the inpatient, overnight attended lab.”

The acquisition of Wenatchee Valley Hospital made it possible to study patients overnight to diagnose sleep problems. And, in addition to Dr. Daniel, Dr. Tom Marinelli has joined Wenatchee Valley Medical Center and practices sleep medicine in addition to pulmonary medicine.

“We had been doing home sleep studies, which are limited,” says Dr. Daniel. “By going to a sleep lab, we’re actually monitoring people while they’re sleeping. We can look at what’s going on with their brain activity when they should be sleeping. It helps us give a more accurate diagnosis.”

Before the Sleep Clinic, patients were diagnosed with home sleep studies. If results didn’t quite explain all their symptoms, they were referred to Seattle or Spokane. Retired college teacher Dick Lapo was sent to a Seattle Sleep Clinic by his family physician, Dr. Danke.

“I wasn’t myself,” recalls Lapo. “I was very, very tired all the time. I would fall asleep out of nowhere.”

When you talk with your doctor about a sleeping problem, they’ll ask if you snore, if you often fall asleep when you don’t intend to, if you ever struggle for breath during sleep, and if you snort or gasp during sleep.

“The standard answer a lot of patients give is, I don’t know, I’m asleep,” says Dr. Daniel. “So we ask their bed partner to come to the interview, because the bed partner can give you a completely different story.”

Nancy Lapo knew something was wrong with husband Dick Lapo’s sleep. “He was holding his breath and making snorting sounds many times a night, waking me up,” Nancy remembers. “I’d count the seconds between his breathing, and give him a jab.”

Diana Wooten’s husband Lonnie had a similar experience. “I would lay there,” he told his wife, “and listen to you, and I would count the seconds between breaths.” Diana, the mother of 15-year-old twins, said “the joke in my house was that my husband snores and I don’t breathe. I would wake up at night with my heart pounding, very short of breath.”

Both Lapo and Wooten were diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea, where the throat closes during sleep, causing seconds or minutes without breathing and sudden wakings throughout the night. To treat their condition, both Lapo and Wooten began using a CPAP machine during sleep. CPAP – Continuous Positive Airway Pressure -- consists of a mask that is worn over the nose at night. The mask is connected to a small blower that puts air under pressure and blows it into the nose.

The CPAP “turns a collapsing throat into a throat that