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Thorax 1998;53:410-413 ( May )

Occasional review

Sleep apnoea and its impact on public health

John Wright,^a Trevor Sheldon^b

^a Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Bradford Royal Infirmary, Duckworth Lane, Bradford BD9 6RJ, UK, ^b Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York, York YO1 5DD, UK

Correspondence to: Dr J Wright.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

	Introduction

In 1997 we published a systematic review on the health effects of obstructive sleep apnoea and the effectiveness of treatment with CPAP.¹ This generated much controversy and considerable correspondence. About half the letters received by the authors suggested that the paper was just stating the obvious, the other half that the paper was completely inaccurate. To help clarify our findings this paper will discuss the public health impact of sleep apnoea and the rationale behind systematic reviews.

In recent years several traditional style reviews in leading medical journals have suggested the importance of sleep apnoea.^2-4 These have claimed that sleep apnoea causes premature death, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, pulmonary hypertension, and road traffic accidents. The high prevalence of 2-4% of the middle aged population⁵ led an editorial writer in the New England Journal of Medicine to claim that the "staggering" impact of sleep apnoea was as big a public health hazard . . . [Full text of this article]

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