Sept. 27, 2023
Mayo Clinic's Center for Sleep Medicine is one of the largest sleep medicine facilities in the United States, with staff caring for more than 6,000 adult and pediatric patients with sleep disorders each year. The center partners with physicians around the world to find answers for patients with some of the most complex sleep conditions.
Fast answers
"Often in less than 48 hours, the center can evaluate a patient, complete the necessary testing and create a treatment plan," says Timothy I. Morgenthaler, M.D., a pulmonologist and sleep medicine specialist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "This is facilitated by a coordinated care model that reduces the need for unnecessary testing and allows us to find answers for patients more quickly."
Convenient care
Mayo Clinic sleep experts have extensive experience in telemedicine, both for initial consultative services, in select cases, and for follow-up care. Nearly 30% of care visits are virtual currently. Mayo Clinic has experience using home sleep apnea testing, including capabilities to provide these services remotely in many cases.
Advice on complex cases
Full consultations in sleep medicine that extend beyond sleep studies allow for more comprehensive and accurate diagnosis and treatment plans for a broader range of patients. "Our comprehensive approach also allows us to identify a care plan that addresses all of a patient's sleep complaints instead of treating each one individually," says Dr. Morgenthaler.
Streamlined input from multiple specialists
Clinicians know that treating sleep issues effectively can require a multidisciplinary team. "Mayo Clinic's Center for Sleep Medicine offers integrative subspecialty sleep medicine team expertise from the specialties of pediatrics, psychiatry, pulmonary medicine, family medicine and neurology," says Dr. Morgenthaler. "We also have readily available on-site expertise available to gain input from experts in other specialties for complex sleep cases, including surgery, cardiology and dental services." The Mayo Clinic Model of Care and ready access to cross-disciplinary expertise ensure that when complex sleep problems are diagnosed, Mayo Clinic can provide comprehensive treatment recommendations that include input from all of the necessary experts without requiring the primary physician at home to manage referrals and recommendations.
ASPEN clinic (Alternative Sleep aPnEa treatmeNt)
Diagnosing obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is often straightforward, but finding a treatment strategy that works for some patients is a challenge. "Our new ASPEN clinic provides a comprehensive evaluation for patients who are unsatisfied with their current OSA treatment and includes consultation from a sleep medicine specialist, a dental sleep medicine specialist and a sleep surgeon," says Dr. Morgenthaler. Mayo Clinic's sleep experts have experience in many ways to provide relief and health benefits to patients with OSA.
Narcolepsy diagnosis, management and research
Although narcolepsy is a rare disease, over 4,500 unique patients with narcolepsy have been seen at Mayo Clinic since 2010. "In addition to clinical care, there is an ambitious research agenda related to the evaluation of diseases of hypersomnia such as narcolepsy," says Dr. Morgenthaler. "For example, a comprehensive narcolepsy patient registry is being built that includes elements concerning the clinical phenotype, physical and laboratory findings, medications, medical comorbidities and sleep study characteristics, including polysomnography and multiple sleep latency testing."
This large patient volume will readily support development of novel diagnostic approaches for narcolepsy via large-scale artificial intelligence analyses of polysomnography and multiple sleep latency testing studies and support enrollment in clinical trials to determine the efficacy and safety of new treatments for narcolepsy and related hypersomnias.
Parasomnias
Unusual behaviors during sleep also represent somewhat uncommon sleep disorders, often linked to neurological disorders. Sleep researchers at Mayo Clinic are advancing knowledge and clinical care for patients with degenerative and autoimmune disorders of the central nervous system.
In addition to providing streamlined diagnostic evaluations and treatment recommendations, Mayo Clinic is one of nine sites across North America participating in the North American Prodromal Synucleinopathy (NAPS) Consortium, which is designed to support clinical care, advance discovery, promote education, and engage patients and their families in order to improve the quality of life and care of individuals living with REM sleep behavior disorder.
For more information
Refer a patient to Mayo Clinic.