What to Expect
A sleep study at Southern Sleep involves a 7.30pm admission to Flinders Private Hospital and overnight stay in one of our comfortable rooms. After preliminary interview and time for you to settle in to your room and get dressed into bed ware, small measuring sensors are attached to your head and body. Once the leads have been attached and signal quality tested, you can relax in bed and watch tv or read for as long as you like and let us know when you want to turn the light out, at which time the recording will be commenced. While you sleep, the computerised signals are monitored continuously by our friendly trained technicians and recorded for later detailed analysis. Our staff are available overnight to assist you with anything at all including toilet stops, which are very easy to do as the equipment includes a detachable box that you take with you so that you can get up quickly and easily without disrupting attached sensors.
While the attached sensors may be initially strange, people typically get used to them in a half hour or so and are often surprised at how little they affect their sleep. There is always some impact of the attached equipment and unfamiliar surrounds, however we acknowledge this and incorporate this into interpretation of your results. Overall sleep quality and quantity is of less importance as what happened to your breathing and brain activity when you are asleep. Moreover, self-report of sleep quality and quantity is often greatly underestimated and it is extremely rare that we need don't get sufficient data.
We ask that you have dinner before coming in and bring with you any medications you normally take in the evening, bed-ware and toiletries and your own pillow if you feel it will help you relax. Take your normal medications and consume the typical amount of alcohol on the night of the study. You will be woken between 6 and 7am in order to be discharged by 730am at the latest. After discharge, a light breakfast is provided at the Hudsons® Cafe in the hospital main foyer. We recommend that leading up to your stay at Southern Sleep that you maintain as table as possible sleep routine and avoid if possible shift work around the time of your study. If you work permanent shift work please call Southern Sleep before your study to discuss how this might affect your study and any measures that can be taken to minimise the impact. Of course if altered sleep -wake patterns and insomnia are part of your problem then the latter points don't apply to you, just try your best to keep bedtimes as regular as possible. More details are provided in the information pack sent to you after you or your door book your study and our staff will be happy to answer any questions you have during your visit.
CPAP titration and other treatment studies also involve the above full wire-up procedure, while you trial the particular therapy overnight.
Daytime Multiple Sleep Latency Tests (MSLTs) are a specialised test which involves measurement of daytime napping. Extra information will be sent to you if you are booked for an MSLT although the vast majority of people will have the standard overnight sleep study only.