How can snoring patients see a doctor quickly and effectively? Whether you are an adult or a child with snoring symptoms, you must go to the hospital, because there are physiological snoring and pathological snoring, physiological snoring generally does not need treatment, but pathological snoring must be treated, but as a patient certainly can not distinguish between the two, so it is necessary to go to the hospital to find a professional doctor in order to give you a definitive diagnosis. Therefore, before seeing a doctor, you must first understand initially, which kind of symptoms you have. If it is a pathological snoring, then the first visit should go to ENT or respiratory medicine. For snoring patients, you need to master these skills to see a doctor quickly and effectively! Peng Yikun, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Guizhou Provincial People’s Hospital ● How to choose hospitals and doctors for snoring? Obstructive sleep apnea hypoventilation syndrome, also known as snoring, commonly known as snoring, is due to apnea and insufficient ventilation caused by narrowing, collapsing, and obstruction of the upper airway, accompanied by snoring, sleep structure disorders, and frequent occurrence of oxygen saturation, daytime somnolence, etc. The narrowing of various parts of the upper airway can lead to snoring, and many snorers can have multiple planes of narrowing and obstruction of the upper airway, such as the nose, nasopharynx, oropharynx, and hypopharyngeal cavity. Many snorers may have multiple planes of narrowing and obstruction in the upper airway, including the nose, nasopharynx, oropharynx and hypopharynx. With the improvement of people’s living standard, the incidence of snoring is increasing year by year. According to the statistics of domestic literature, the incidence of snoring is about 4%-10%, and the incidence of snoring in middle-aged and old-aged people is as high as about 50%. Snoring is a disease with serious potential harm to the human body, and in the past 20 years, people have gradually deepened their understanding of it, recognizing that it causes different degrees and aspects of cardiovascular disease, and the heaviest can be sudden death, and often combined with metabolic syndrome, the main clinical manifestations of obesity, insulin resistance or type 2 diabetes mellitus, lipid metabolism abnormalities, hypertension, coronary heart disease and hyperuricemia, and plays a very important role in the pathogenesis of cardio-cerebral and cerebral vascular diseases. In the pathogenesis of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, it occupies a very important position. What kind of hospitals should snoring patients go to? In fact, snoring is usually caused by problems in the upper respiratory tract, in other words, in principle, the departments for this disease should be the Department of Otorhinolaryngology and the Department of Respiratory Medicine. In other words, in principle, the consultation departments for this disease should be ENT and respiratory medicine. Therefore, snoring patients should consult these two departments as their main consultation departments. Most of the otorhinolaryngology departments are now called otorhinolaryngology head and neck surgery, which involves a wide range of diseases, and it is very difficult for a small hospital to divide the specialties into such a detailed way. From this point of view, if the patient feels snoring it is best to choose a tertiary hospital to see a doctor. Only this kind of hospital will have such a fine division of ENT – otology, rhinology, head and neck, pharynx and throat; generally, small hospitals will not be so categorized, and the doctors will not be very skillful in terms of expertise, so the diagnosis and treatment of patients will not be so ideal. Which department should a snoring patient go to for the first diagnosis? According to my personal professional experience, I suggest that it is best to go to a local doctor who specializes in laryngology, of course, if the hospital has a snoring clinic or snoring treatment center, that would be the best. What are the tips to improve the efficiency of seeing a doctor? When patients visit general hospitals, they will often do some nasal endoscopy or fiberoptic nasopharyngoscopy, and it is best to bring all these results with you. The specialized tests to diagnose snoring are often done with fiberoptic nasolaryngoscopy, respiratory sleep monitoring tests and CT or MRI of the upper airway . If you go to a general hospital, usually the doctor will only do nasal endoscopy or fiberoptic nasolaryngoscopy, and will not arrange the patient to do the latter two tests. However, it is better to bring them with you if you have them. What are the most common questions asked by the doctor when visiting a snoring clinic? Why do you ask about symptoms? Doctors need to distinguish whether the snoring is physiologic or pathologic based on the symptoms. Many patients may not be able to describe the symptoms clearly due to various limitations (such as their own education level, ability to understand, etc.). Questions often asked by doctors: First, do you hold your breath at night when you sleep? Second, do you experience apnea during the night? Third, are you drowsy during the day? Fourth, do you have a history of hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, hyperlipidemia, etc.? Fifth, do you have a dry mouth or a strong sense of foreign body in the throat after getting up in the morning? Sixth, are there symptoms of sexual dysfunction, memory loss, low cognitive ability, increased nocturia, etc.? Patients must listen to the doctor’s questions clearly and not be able to answer the questions according to their own preferences by telling irrelevant questions. In short, only when the symptoms are clearly stated will it be beneficial for the doctor to make an accurate judgment as soon as possible. ●What tests are needed to confirm the diagnosis of snoring? Answer: 1. Polysomnography also known as PSG test, this test needs to be booked on the ninth floor of the Respiratory Medicine Department of our hospital, and you have to sleep in the hospital for one night at a cost of 400 RMB. 2.Fiberoptic nasopharyngoscopy, can be completed on the same day of the visit, the cost of 160 yuan. 3, Sinus 3D CT and upper airway MRI 3D imaging examination, this examination can be completed in the hospitalization, because the cost is higher, if the examination in the outpatient clinic will have to pay out-of-pocket, if the hospitalization examination can be incurred within the hospitalization fee, can be reimbursed. ● If a patient has already had the test done at another hospital, how long will the results be valid? This is determined on a case-by-case basis. Within half a year, there is no need to re-check the PSG, but there are some diseases and external factors that may cause changes in snoring, in which case it is necessary to re-check the PSG. In addition, for PSG monitoring, there may be some discrepancies in the results due to the patient’s poor quality of sleep on the night of the test and the level of the technician. Therefore many times PSG monitoring needs to be repeated just to ensure the accuracy of the test results. Fiberoptic nasopharyngoscopy usually does not need to be rechecked for a month if the pictures are clear, and all others need to be rechecked before the test is performed. What do I need to do before the polysomnography test? 1.Drinking coffee, tea and other stimulating beverages is prohibited on the day of the examination, because in addition to making people excited and difficult to fall asleep, they will also excite the respiratory center, causing changes in the condition and making it difficult to reflect the normal condition. 2. In order to fall asleep during the examination, some patients take sleeping pills such as Valium orally or examine after drinking alcohol, which are not desirable. 3.Many physiological signals in polysomnography are recorded by the electrodes attached to the skin surface, and good contact is the key to ensure high-quality signals, so it is necessary to take a bath, wash the hair and shave the beard before the examination. 4. In order to ensure that you can sleep well that night, it is recommended that you do not need to take a lunch break at noon on that day. ● What should I do after I get my polysomnography test results? It usually takes three days for the report to be issued after the polysomnography test, which means that patients have to go to the respiratory department for the second time to get the test report. Therefore, if patients continue to see me for the test results, it is recommended that they come to get the report on Friday morning, and then go to the outpatient clinic in the afternoon to see me to read the report, and then they don’t have to register for a number to see the test results, which saves them from going back and forth to the hospital. Dr. Peng Yikun clinic time: Specialist clinic: Friday afternoon (Note: Specialist clinic need to make an appointment for themselves, generally do not add number. If you want to add a number can be booked online Oh.)