[Quantitative studies assessing daytime fatigue, vigilance and attention before and after nCPAP therapy of sleep apnea syndrome].

As far as day symptoms are concerned, excessive drowsiness and tendency to fall asleep are signposts in diagnosis and treatment of sleep apnoea syndrome exercising a decisive influence on the patient's quality of life. Recent studies (Findley et al., 1988; George et al., 1987; Aldrich et al. 12/89) have shown that the patients are additionally endangered by an increased accident risk. After controversial data in the literature in respect of the usefulness of neuropsychological testing when going into this problem we tried to develop an alternative to MSLT (Multiple Sleep Latency Test) which is the clinical standard, since the technique required is so complicated that it is only rarely used in everyday practice. We aimed at easy application in clinical daily routine. We examined via computer-assisted neuropsychological testing the attention and concentration performance in 14 patients having a sleep apnoea syndrome of moderate severity, before and after a short treatment course of three nights with nCPAP, and compared the results with those obtained in 17 patients with a similar pattern of complaints in whom a sleep apnoea syndrome could be excluded. The test lasted for 45 minutes in each case. Various reaction time tests were performed with acoustical, optical and combined phenomena. The reaction times as well as the number of errors were noted. We could show that the treatment course resulted in an improvement of certain attention and concentration performances, above all however in continuous attention against a monotonous stimulation background (vigilance)--and improvement that can be measured already after a short therapy period.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)