Somers - Figure 30
Effect of CPAP
FIG. 30: A recent paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association[17] reported results of a randomized control trial looking at long-term events, specifically incident hypertension or cardiovascular events. The trial compared the effects of CPAP versus no intervention in >700 patients over 4 years and found that CPAP did not show any significant reduction in outcomes. A caveat was that the study may have been underpowered to detect these events, and, importantly, the trial looked primarily at non-sleepy patients, which allows the possibility that it is primarily in sleepy patients that CPAP therapy may be especially beneficial for treating high blood pressure.
References
Barbé F, Durán-Cantolla J, Sáncheze-de-la-Torre M, et al. Effect of continuous positive airway pressure on the incidence of hypertension and cardiovascular events in nonsleepy patients with obstructive sleep apnea: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 2012;307:2161–2168.
