September 29, 1999
New center treats sleep disorders
By JENN DIRECTOR KNUDSEN
TAB STAFF WRITER    
       

Joe Secondary, lab manager at Sleep HealthCenters in Newton Centre, dons a respiratory device called a CPAP machine that's used by people with sleep apnea, one of the most common sleep disorders. Photo credit: KEITH E. JACOBSON

The staff at Sleep HealthCenters LLC stay awake to help its patients slumber.
In July privately held SHC expanded its operations and opened an outpatient sleep-medicine clinic at 1400 Centre St. in Newton Centre. To officially mark the opening of the center's new headquarters, the staff held an open house at its two offices Tuesday, Sept. 28.

Though many sleep centers have recently sprouted up all over the United States, they are "fragmented," said David Barone, SHC's chief executive officer and co-founder. By contrast, SHC, affiliated with Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital, is the first such clinic nationwide to provide its patients access to sleep-disorder specialists, diagnosis and treatment all at one location, Barone said.

SHC now operates the largest sleep disorders practice in Massachusetts, according to the company. Barone and business partner Stanley Goldstein also recently opened a center in Colorado and plan to open one outside Baltimore before the end of the year.

Barone and Goldstein declined to disclose the centers' expected revenue, but they said the market for diagnosing and treating sleep disorders is at more than $15 billion annually in the United States.

"We elected in this case to take the program out of the hospital," Barone said. "This system is really not available any place else. We're the first to put this together."

At the Newton center, people who believe they suffer from a sleep disorder are evaluated for a variety of problems. The conditions are many and include insomnia and sleep apnea. Sleep apnea causes people temporarily to stop breathing while sleeping, signaling the brain to wake them up to restore oxygen flow.

If it's suspected that a person needs treatment, he undergoes a sleep study. For this, the patient spends the night in one of the center's six "diagnostic suites" to be monitored - and hopefully diagnosed - during the night.

"Not all sleep problems require a sleep study," Barone said.

Stanley Goldstein, co-founder of SHC and the company president, said since July the Newton center's six beds have been filled seven nights a week.

For the sleep study, patients arrive at the center at night to be hooked up to electrodes that monitor air flow, body temperature, oxygen intake and myriad other "sleep state" conditions, said Steve Cunningham, director, technical services.

And some patients are fitted for a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine, which pushes a regulated stream of air through a patient's nose as he sleeps during the night.

Then patients are led to their rooms, each of which has a full-size bed, private bathroom, an infrared camera, a television and a framed van Gogh print on the wall. Cunningham said the rooms are designed to feel less like hospital rooms and more like hotel suites.

But he acknowledged that not every patient initially feels at ease in the controlled setting.

"Some patients do have concerns about being able to fall asleep with all the electrodes on," Cunningham said. "We tell them it won't be your best night of sleep, but it won't be your worst," he said.

To pinpoint a person's condition, two technicians monitor each patient during the night. They watch and analyze patients' activities on TV monitors and computer screens, Cunningham said.

The computer graphics - multi-colored jagged lines that resemble seismic activity graphs - indicate where sleep is interrupted. Some sleep apnea patients awaken up to 300 times each night, Cunningham said. Usually the patients don't realize they are not sleeping through the night; rather, they can hardly stay awake during the day, he said.

In fact, these people often fall asleep on the job, or worse, at the wheel of a car. Drowsy driving results in roughly 100,000 traffic accidents annually, according to the National Highway Safety Administration.

The morning after the sleep study, patients are treated to a continental breakfast, and they leave the center by 7:30 a.m. If necessary, they return to the center for follow-up treatments and consultations. Most insurance policies cover the services offered at SHC, said Goldstein, a Newton Centre resident.

Bernie Delman last week came to SHC in Newton for a follow-up visit. Delman used to be one of the estimated 30 million Americans suffering from an undiagnosed sleep disorder. But six months ago Delman was diagnosed with sleep apnea at BWH, and he now owns his own CPAP machine and uses it every night.

"The first night I used the equipment I felt better the next day. I felt a real physical change in my body," said Delman, 71. He said he no longer takes afternoon naps, and his life - and his wife's - has improved.

"I couldn't sleep on my back," he says of the years he went undiagnosed. "Now I sleep on my back all the time," He laughed, "My wife says I don't snore anymore, and she's happy."

For more information, call Sleep HealthCenters at 1 (877) SLEEPHC.