The 3% Rule of Sleep Apnea: What Is It?
When physicians diagnose sleep apnea, they do not examine the number of times that you cease breathing, but also assess the extent of oxygen depletion from your bloodstream when you sleep. The most important step employed in this process is known as the 3% rule.
You can probably recall that on a sleep test you took or on your sleep report, there was something that was referred to as the 3 percent oxygen desaturation rule.
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Knowing About Sleep Apnea Incidents:
Sleep apnea occurs as a result of your airway either partially or fully closing when you are asleep. Such stops in the breathing process are known as apneas (full-scale interruptions) or hypopneas (partial interruptions). Whenever this occurs, your oxygen levels may reduce and your brain briefly wakes you up to begin breathing once again.
In order to diagnose and determine the severity of sleep apnea, physicians determine the Apnea-Hypopnea Index (AHI), the mean number of apneas and hypopneas per hour of sleep. All hypopneas are not counted equally though. That’s where the 3% rule comes in.
What the 3% Rule Means?
The 3% rule is the minimum decrease in your blood oxygen to be classified as a breathing event as needed to obtain a hypopnea during a sleep examination.
Here’s how it works:
- When your breathing becomes as low as 30 percent or more in 10 seconds or more and
- This reduces your oxygen saturation by at least 3 per cent, and this will be regarded as a hypopnea based on the 3% rule.
- That is, any time your oxygen level decreases by 3 per cent or more due to the slowing or shallowening of your breathing, it is recorded as a breathing event.
- All of these then are summed up, to get your AHI, and decide whether you have sleep apnea, and how serious it is.
The 3% vs. 4% Rule:
Some labs, and insurance providers, may also refer to the 4 percent rule, which is a more stringent rule.
The distinction between the two lies in the extent to which an oxygen drop would be considered a hypopnea:
- 3% rule: Includes events when oxygen decreases by at least 3 percent.
- 4% rule: Counts only those events which have a drop in oxygen that equals to or exceeds 4 percent.
The 3% rule tends to detect more hypopneas because the rule is less stringent and hence may result in a high AHI score. This implies that milder cases of sleep apnea would be identified with the help of the 3% rule when they may not be identified using the 4% rule.
Varied sleep laboratories and agencies have varied principles. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) has since adopted the 3% desaturation rule as an official criteria when scoring hypopneas despite the fact that some insurers continue to use the 4% rule to cover hypopneas.
Why the 3% Rule Matter?
The 3% rule assists physicians to identify early or mild cases of sleep apnea that have a potential to impact your health and energy levels. Even minimal changes in oxygen levels can disrupt deep sleep, surge up your heart rate, and put a strain on your body.
The 3 percent rule will allow the sleep experts to have a more in-depth understanding of your sleeping pattern during the night and prescribe the appropriate treatment, be it the CPAP therapy, oral appliance or lifestyle modification.