Your next snore could be your last

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - How are you sleeping?

Bel Air inventor David Krausman has a device that can measure the quality of your sleep and identify potentially dangerous conditions like sleep apnea.

The device, about the size of a movie-theater candy box, straps to a patient’s wrist. Using a disposable sensor attached to the index finger, the DeSat Counter measures vital statistics like pulse, breathing and how much oxygen gets into the blood.

It goes home with you.

“People can be very symptomatic with sleep apnea when they’re at home,” Krausman said. “Then you get them into a sleep center and hook them up to all these wires and monitors and put them in a strange bed and expect them to sleep normally?”

The device contains a computer processor that analyzes the telltale interruptions in breathing that form sleep apnea. It records individual apnea events, flags incomplete data if the monitor is pulled off in the night, detects limb movements, and can download data onto a physician’s computer for analysis.

People with sleep apnea stop breathing repeatedly during their sleep, according to the American Sleep Apnea Association Web page. Sometimes these interruptions come hundreds of times during the night and often for a minute or longer.

They do not get restful, deep sleep, but wake up feeling like they got hit in the head, Krausman said. The aftermath of an apnea event, when the heart races to recover, can strain the cardiovascular system and cause high blood pressure.

The monitor earned Krausman and his co-inventor, Richard Allen, a fourth-place prize in the 2007 Modern Marvels Invent Now challenge presented by the History Channel this past weekend, though it’s still pending FDA approval.

“These inventors represent those who have the tenacity to pursue an answer to a question that goes unanswered,” Judy Klein-Frimer, co-creator of the Challenge for The History Channel said in a statement.

Krausman, 68, a former Johns Hopkins University researcher, has worked full-time as a medical products inventor for the last 10 to 12 years.

khille@baltimoreexaminer.com

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