Claudio L.A. Bassetti, Winfried Randerath, Luca Vignatelli et al
European Respiratory Journal 2020 55: 1901104; DOI: 10.1183/13993003.01104-2019
This European Academy of Neurology (EAN), European Respiratory Society (ERS), ESRS, and the European Stroke Organization statement on the impact of sleep disorders on risk and outcome of stroke comes to three main conclusions:
(1) OSA (which affects 10–20% of the general population and 50% of stroke patients) likely increases the risk of stroke and worsens its outcome.
(2) CPAP possibly has a favourable effect on both stroke risk and outcome.
(3) non-apnoea SWD (which are common in both general population and stroke patients) may be associated with an increased stroke risk and a worse outcome.
The authors note that a recent meta-analysis by Gottlieb et al suggested that long sleep duration hypersomnia and self-reported REM sleep behaviour disorder, SWD which were not analysed in their study, may also increase the risk of stroke.