Sleep medicine: Evolution in India
Ten years ago,
sleep medicine was in its infancy in India. The first sleep disorders center was started by Dr. J C Suri at Safdarjung hospital, and sleep medicine remained a pulmonologist's domain as in the west.
Over the years, the ISDA and the ISRS have held many national conferences and symposia as well as practical workshops fuelling the interest, knowledge, and practice of sleep medicine, particularly among neurologists and allied specialties such as psychiatry, ENT as well as physicians. As a result, there are many centers in India, which cater to the diagnosis and treatment of sleep-related disorders at various levels of expertise.
The article published in this issue typically projects the changing scenario over 8 years, the use of proper questionnaires, better equipment as well as the increase in public awareness of sleep-related disorders, particularly obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and specialized training in sleep medicine evaluation and its diagnostic accuracy. With the boom of increasing incidence of obesity, metabolic syndrome, there is raising public awareness of disorders such as snoring, UARS, and OSA. This increase in diagnostic accuracy by use of relevant questionnaires and better diagnostic tools and similar patterns of changing scenarios are now seen in most of the advanced sleep centers in India but have not been reported. There are very few epidemiological studies to depict the exact prevalence and incidence of OSA, RLS in India.
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