MedWire News: Heart failure patients with untreated sleep apnoea are more likely to die sooner than those without the sleep disorder, researchers have found.

The study results highlight the importance of identifying and treating sleep apnoea in people with heart failure, said lead researcher Dr Douglas Bradley, from the Toronto General Hospital in Ontario, Canada.

Sleep apnoea is a condition in which sufferers experience breathing interruptions at least 15 to 20 times an hour during the night. These breathing pauses can deprive the brain of oxygen and cause increases in blood pressure and heart rate.

The researchers explain that although sleep apnoea is common in people with heart failure, it is not known whether the sleep disorder affects patients' survival times.

To investigate, Dr Bradley and team studied data on 164 patients with heart failure. Each participant underwent sleep tests to detect or rule out the presence of sleep apnoea.

After an average monitoring period of 7 years, 24% of participants with untreated sleep apnoea had died compared with just 12% of those without the condition.

No deaths occurred among the participants who were taking treatment for sleep apnoea.

After taking into account a variety of factors, such as heart failure severity and the presence of other conditions, the researchers calculated that heart failure patients with untreated sleep apnoea were nearly twice as likely to die as those without the condition.

Commenting on the findings, Dr Bradley said: "The vast majority of heart failure patients across North America are not being assessed for the diagnosis of sleep apnoea and, as a result, are not being treated for it.

"Our data say that many of these patients need to be treated for this disorder and that this will have a significant impact on their survival."

The research is published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.