PAP therapy saves lives in heart patients: ResMed

Positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy in heart patients with sleep apnoea can reduce mortality rates by up to 38%, analysis from ResMed (ASX:RMD) suggests.

Analysis of three years of medical data shows that the mortality rate of patients with sleep apnoea associated with coronary heart disease (CHD) was reduced by 37.9% in those given PAP therapy, the company said.

In patients with heart failure, mortality rates were reduced by 31.6%, according to the data, which was taken from the German Statutory Health Insurance database.

Across the whole population of sleep apnoea patients, mortality rates were reduced by 37.5% - from 7.2% to 4.5%.

Details from the analysis were presented at the ESC Congress 2014 in Barcelona last week. The analysis compared the outcomes of 4068 sleep apnoea patients on PAP therapy against an equal number of controls.

ResMed also used ESC Congress 2014 to present results from a separate study suggesting that the company’s SleepMinder diagnostics device can more accurately diagnose sleep apnoea in heart failure patients compared to a single hospital-based polysomnography (PSG) assessment.

PSG assessments are the current standard of care for diagnosing sleep-disordered breathing in heart failure patients. But the study suggests that they are more prone to underestimating the severity of a patient’s condition compared to two weeks of analysis from the SleepMinder device.

ResMed (ASX:RMD) shares were trading 0.88% lower at $5.66 as of around 2 pm on Monday.