Excessive daytime sleepiness and the sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome: a major public health problem?

There is unequivocal evidence that the sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome (SAHS) causes daytime sleepiness and a consequential increase in road accidents. There is not, however, good agreement about the magnitude of that increase in risk. Estimates for the increased risk range from 1.3 to at least 6 times that of control populations. These figures can be used to provide estimates suggesting that between 1% and 50% of all road accident deaths are due to SAHS, depending on the prevalence of SAHS and the relative mortality of SAHS related road accidents. There is need for further investigation to increase confidence in these speculative figures, but meantime, in comparison to death rates from other conditions, excessive daytime sleepiness in SAHS is not a proven major public health problem.