Cheyne-Stokes Breathing

Chaynes-Stokes breathing disorder is a form of sleep apnea characterized by repeated episodes of breathing, much like adult apnea, along with repeated awakenings during sleep. This is an intermittent cessation of ventilation for at least 15 seconds in longer, repeating cycles. Respiratory disorders such as CSD can cause widespread respiratory symptoms, including nocturnal sleepiness, daytime sleepiness, snoring, midbreathing pauses, and seizures.

ChSD is an important problem in clinical practice, since under certain circumstances it has consequences for human health and life activity. They are that apnea, an associated breathing disorder, causes risk factors that lead to serious consequences for the cardiovascular system.

Some signs of SSc remain unnoticed in those patients undergoing standard polysomnography and are often underestimated. Patients with apnea and palatoglossus syndrome, but no other signs other than normal sleep-disordered breathing, may require a lot of effort to get the correct diagnosis and treatment.

Cheyne-Stokes breathing is one of the most common sleep apneas in childhood. It is defined as a prolonged series of respiratory arrests and apnea lasting from 15 seconds to several minutes and is accompanied by a decrease in oxygen saturation, pronounced cyanosis, cyanosis of the mucous membranes, skin and axillary folds. It usually appears in children over 4 years of age, but can also occur in adults.

This breathing disorder causes many unpleasant symptoms, for example: the child experiences a feeling of shortness of breath, coughing, noisy breathing, weakness, fainting, poor appetite, nocturnal enuresis, as well as problems with school. The causes of the disease are insufficient physical activity and pulmonary hypertrophy, which occurs due to cardiac arrhythmia, requiring an increase in the respiratory surface of the lungs. Parents should recognize the disorder themselves using a pulse oximeter, which will reveal an increase (decrease) in blood oxygen saturation, or contact a pediatrician. Treatment consists of following a number of rules (organizing a daily routine with physical activity), massage to improve blood circulation, and, if necessary, medications can be prescribed.

Cheyne-Stokes breathing (not to be confused with asynchronous breathing, although the mechanism of opening the bronchi can also play a certain role in its maintenance) would seem to be a relatively rare pathological condition. However, in reality it is a very common problem, inherent in many serious diseases of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems. The lack of symptoms of this condition makes it even more difficult to detect even by doctors, let alone by people concerned about their health. The reason for this lies in the intrapulmonary proprioceptive mechanisms involved in the regulation of breathing, which normally allow not only to maintain certain indicators of the gas composition of the blood and body fluids, but also coordinate the nature of the opening and closing respiratory muscles. The development of disturbances in mechanical processes in the lungs with the formation of pathological breathing, as a rule, occurs due to primary damage to the connective tissue or stroma of the lung and structural disorders of the pulmonary plexus or bronchi. The consequence may be an increase in pressure on both sides of the aortic valve of the lungs, which, along with a decrease