Polysomnography: Purpose

Polysomnography is used to help diagnose and evaluate a number of sleep disorders. For instance, it can help diagnose sleep apnea, a common disorder in middle-aged and elderly obese men, in which the muscles of the soft palate in the back of the throat relax and close off the airway during sleep. This may cause the person to snore loudly and gasp for air at night, and to be excessively sleepy and doze off during the day. Another syndrome often evaluated by polysomnography is narcolepsy. In narcolepsy, people have sudden attacks of sleep and/or cataplexy (temporary loss of muscle tone caused by moments of emotion, such as fear, anger, or surprise, which causes people to slump or fall over), sleep paralysis or hallucinations at the onset of sleep. Polysomnography is often used to evaluate parasomnias (abnormal behaviors or movements during sleep), such as sleep walking, talking in one's sleep, nightmares, and bedwetting. It can also be used to detect or evaluate seizures that occur in the middle of the night, when the patient and his or her family are unlikely to be aware of them.

— Robert Scott Dinsmoor