I had two sleep studies done in the last couple of years. One was to see if I had sleep apnea. The second was to calibrate the best CPAP pressure.
I went to the same facility both times, even had the same tech. It was totally private, like a hotel room. Had my own bathroom and everything!
I arrived and watched TV in my room. About 8ish the tech started to put the stickies on. By 10pm I was wired up and had my final bathroom break. I slept on my back, which was what was recommended for my study. I think I got up maybe once to pee.
The next morning I was out of there by 6-6:30.
One thing they won’t tell you is that sleep studies are expensive. If you have insurance it will cover quite a bit of it. Even with Medicare I was only billed $200-$300.
I now use a CPAP every night and I can really tell a difference.
Good luck to you! 
They lost my confidence when they told me I also have restless leg syndrome. I don’t. I can go to sleep with a dish of jellybeans on the bed next to my feet and wake up with the dish undisturbed. What they told me about my leg movement was pure hokum.
I don’t remember the hair glue specifically, but I did have a local reaction to the ones on my legs and chest. I’ve had it with EKG leads, too. I don’t have either thing done frequently enough to bother finding out what specific thing I’m allergic to. Whatever it is apparently doesn’t occur in my regular day to day life.
I was able to sleep as well as I ever do. The place I went didn’t tell me not to bring a book. I had one with me, and there was a TV in the room. I remember watching Hardball.
I had a polysomnogram and a multiple sleep latency test as part of my narcolepsy diagnosis.
The glue they used for my electrodes had a fantastic chemical solvent smell, but dissipated quickly. They put quite a few on my head, then taped a breathing sensor to my nose, two sensors to my jaw to measure clench or grinding behavior, a mic to my neck for snoring, a blood oxygen sensor was clipped on my finger, two electrodes were glued to my chest for heart rate monitoring, and some sensors were put on my leg to measure restless legs.
I brought my own pillow and an extra blanket and had no trouble falling asleep that night. I woke up once to go to the restroom and had them disconnect the harness of wires from the machine. I woke up that morning, they said I had no apnea problems.
For the MSLT, they took off some of the sensors (I think the leg ones, the throat one, and the blood oxygenation one) and set me in a room with some movies and books (I brought my own movies and books). I was told to entertain myself for a period of time, then they came in, took me to the room I slept in the night before, and gave me a chance to sleep.
With the lights off and a general hiss of white noise, I didn’t last long before falling asleep. Shortly, then came in and woke me and took me to the other room again where I waited a while (I think about an hour). This cycle happened 5 times total.
Later, they told me that the MSLT consists of setting up the environment to sleep, giving you a chance to sleep, then measuring if you fall asleep, how long that takes, and how long it takes for REM activity (if it occurs). I believe they told me you only get around 15 minutes before they come back in and wake you up.
Most people don’t fall asleep that fast after a restful night of sleep, and almost no one who isn’t narcoleptic can hit REM sleep within 15 minutes. I fell asleep in 4 out of the 5 opportunities, with an average time to sleep of 3.2 minutes. In those sleep cycles, I hit REM sleep within a few minutes, and in one of the cycles I was having REM activity before actually being asleep (or so I was told).
I found these things out later, since they don’t really tell you any results there. After the nap cycles, they disconnected the remaining electrodes, used some solvent to get out some of the glue, then I went home for a shower and went to class that afternoon. A comb and some conditioner got out all the remaining glue over the next day or so.
Conditioner before shampoo, and comb for globs, for your hair.
The glue they use for the electrodes on your skin doesn’t come off with soap and water. I ended up using acetone (recommended by a nurse acquaintance). Came right off.
I am pretty sure I don’t have apnea and would be much surprised by that diagnosis (I am getting the results of my test last week, tomorrow). My symptoms are I sleep very shallowly and wake up tired every morning and fall to bits by 1 pm, every day. If I don’t take pills I am staring-awake all night. So I’ll be interested to see whether I can be helped. It would be great if it is apnea because there is a proven treatment, but I bet it isn’t.
Sleep test was sort of a cross between a boring nightmare and trying to sleep in an airport under a table. I wasn’t bothered so much by the wires & nasal cannula as that it was really cold. I had extra blankets and was still freezing cold.
Not if you go to one that is part of the local hospital system.
I went, had no incidents of apnea or RLS at all, almost woke up once apparently, woke up within 5 minutes of when I told the guy I would, and felt like some monster spooged all over my head - but my Dad told me about the conditioner trick, so I didn’t bother showering there but headed back home for my own shower.
I was actually disappointed not to have any form of apnea, I was hoping it was a root cause of my malignant blood pressure. I still would love to get off the handful of pills I need to hork down for it daily.
I know, an anecdote is not data - but I went into my sleep study, expecting a diagnosis of apnea, but no. They told me, no apnea, nothing odd, I’m a moderate snorer. That was it.
Not for me. I DO have apnea, the CPAP mask change my life.
I wondered that too when I had one last year, and the pre-bedtime entertainment was a series of videos about how awesome CPAP was, produced by the CPAP equipment manufacturer.
I got a diagnosis of “mild apnea” and they wanted to do a follow-up study with me using CPAP, but I wasn’t really interested in CPAP. I was going to be fitted with a SomnoDent appliance and my dentist wanted a sleep study done beforehand.
Echo what everyone else has said about the wires and hair goop and difficulty sleeping. Mine was done in what would’ve been a pretty nice motel room, but I had a hell of a time falling asleep and woke up after just a couple of hours.
It takes about an hour for them to attach all of the wires. While they were doing it I thought, “how am I ever going to be able to sleep with all of these things on me?” Before saying this to the technician, I realized everybody probably says that. So instead I asked, “how many people tell you they’re never going to be able to sleep with all of these wires on?” Her answer: “All of them”.
I then asked, how many people actually fall asleep? Her answer: “All of them.”
It seems like you will never get to sleep, but you probably will. I had a more restless night than normal and didn’t feel like I got much sleep at all, but they told me afterwords that I was asleep for 6 hours during the night.
My test showed “mild” apnea, nothing severe enough for a CPAP machine. I’m still waiting for my dentist to get approval for a dental appliance.
All in all, the sleep study was pretty interesting, and not a big problem.
J.
Plan on it being it being the worst night’s sleep you ever had and take the next day off from work. The electrode paste they used on me came out OK with hot water. The one novelty is that the hospital mine was done through uses a suite of rooms at the local Hyatt, rather than at the hospital or some grim windowless place. Once they wire you up, it really doesn’t matter where you are.
They might do what’s called a split study if you hit some level of apnea by 2 AM or so, in which case, they’ll put you on a CPAP and see how it works for you. I did not meet that qualifier, but was ultimately diagnosed with an AHI (apnea/hypopnea index - a measure of how often you stop breathing. This is the main number people use when talking about how bad apnea is.) of about 35, which is considered severe.
I was given the option of going back to the sleep lab for a CPAP “titration” study, or getting a CPAP machine set to auto, so the machine figures out what I need every night at home without needing another crappy night’s sleep ar the lab with wires glued to me. Gee…no brainer there!
Now that my machine watches over me, so to speak, my average AHI is under 2, and I no longer tend to fall asleep at work after lunch, or at night when watching TV.
I’ve had them done at a couple of different places. They all told me not to take in caffeine after a certain hour. Getting wired up is a pain, and the tech will not argue with you at all if you say “let me go pee FIRST and then you can start putting on electrodes”. In fact, the tech will think that this is a dandy idea. Even if you customarily sleep in just your briefs, and you don’t care if other people see you wandering down to the bathroom in your skivvies, plan on wearing PJs or a sleep shirt. I found that a short nightie was just the ticket. I had electrodes attached all over my head and torso, and a couple on my legs. However, the leads were combined into a plug, which could be disconnected, thrown over my shoulder, and worn to the bathroom without getting all unhooked and rehooked.
Yes, getting the goop out of my hair was a pain. I think it took me three days before it all showered out. My hair is pretty thick, though, and at the time it was quite long, too, nearly waist length.
Amazingly, I was able to sleep pretty well during the test, even though I usually sleep during the day and I have problems sleeping in strange rooms. The beds were very comfortable. I brought in a snack and a supply of glucose tablets. Fortunately, I didn’t have to use the glucose tablets. I also brought a couple of books. There was a plasma TV but I didn’t find anything that I wanted to watch. The room was a pleasant one, and not at all clinical seeming. About the only thing that I could have wished for would be a sound system for white noise.
In 2003 I went in for a sleep study, and I detailed the procedure in a thread here: My night at Bellevue – or people get paid to watch me snore.
The results of the study were that I had mild sleep apnea, particularly when I was sleeping on my back. What the doctor told me to do was to take an old T-shirt, sew a pocket onto the back, put a tennis ball into the pocket, and sleep in the shirt with the ball. Then, when I rolled over onto my back, I would get jabbed by the tennis and roll back onto my front or side. After a few months of sleeping in the tennis ball shirt, my body trained itself not to roll onto its back when sleeping, and I didn’t need to wear the shirt.
Anyway, earlier this year, my doctor recommended a follow-up study since 10 years had passed. This study was at the Cornell sleep center, not Bellevue, and the set-up was largely the same, though the facility was a lot nicer, more like a hotel room than a medical office.
During the study, they found that yes, indeed, I was not sleeping on my back. After I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, the techs recommended that I try to sleep on my back. Trying, I couldn’t get to sleep (or at least so I thought) and eventually asked the techs if I could go back on my side.
The results of the study were that I had a low rate of apnea/hypopnea events. The one exception is when I was on my back and, it turns out, I had fallen into a shallow sleep for a few minutes, when I had a large number of apneas. Still, my my nightly average fell well below the threshold for an apnea diagnosis.
Idle Thoughts, I would recommend against going for a long period of without sleep before your study, but instead that you try to use your normal routine. (Actually, you should ask your doctor about this before you try anything.) Though everyone recognizes you get a shitty night’s sleep with all of the wires and crap hanging off you, the idea of the study is to show how things are in as normal a condition as possible. Surprisingly, it is possible to sleep with all the apparatus plastered to your body, and I didn’t really get that bad a night’s sleep when I did it the last time.
Good luck.
Other than what was said above:
Bring a hat (a baseball cap for me) for when you leave with all that goop in your hair. You’ll look like hell with all that stuff on you. Bring or find a napkin to stick in your hat so the goop in your hair doesn’t goop into your hat. Seriously, tons, tons! of goop. I did 3 sleep studies and it was like that each time.
Yeah the goop thing, what others have said. squeegee’s hat idea is good one. Have to remember that if there’s another one for me.
I’ve had two through the years and I was able to sleep well enough. The poster about the real picture of a real person in a real sleep study… I had way more wires than that. Really. Sounds like many others here did too.
There’s another thread where I just posted this: I was dx’d with severe obstructive sleep apnea. They showed me the data and excerpts of the video tape. The CPAP is a game changer for me, and before being dx’d I thought I slept fine and restfully. My nose gets dry so I use KY Jelly and that helps alot.
As to scams, I can’t say they don’t happen. I guess it’s likely they do happen. Ask to see your data and video evidence if you’re dx’d. The data is easy to fake, just put your name onto the readouts for another person, but the video is much harder to falsify.
ETA:
The other thread is “Sleep Apnea woes” - links to my two recent posts, for reference:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=16531191#post16531191
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=16531217#post16531217
As far as the goop. When I participated there was a room with a “barber chair”. A technician did a pretty fair job of de-gooping me. This was in a University research center. Is this no longer done?
Depends on where you go. I was de-gooped a little but not thoroughly. YMMV.
I purposely scheduled mine on Friday night so I could stumble out of there looking like hell at 6ish Saturday morning and no one would bat an eye. And then I could go home and actually sleep!
I had the same problem- I’m a stomach or side sleeper, and they had me so wired up, that the only way I could lay was on my back.
So between all the crap hooked up to me, the (to me) unnatural position I was in, and the unusual setting, I think I slept maybe an hour and a half both when they did the initial assessment and when they tried the CPAP.
Worst $500 I ever spent. I’m not entirely convinced that it’s not a racket to try and sell CPAP machines.
My writeup, from a thread by Nars Glinley.
Being sleep deprived is a good idea (I always do this).
(bolding mine)
I heartily disagree with that, unless by “everyone” you mean “every patient”; of all the studies I’ve had, I’ve had precisely ONE person acknowledge that you’ll sleep badly. The technicians who do the wiring-up have universally been surprised when I say I think I’ll have trouble. Seriously. Morons.
I don’t recommend pulling an all-nighter beforehand. I do recommend being a bit more deprived than usual, especially if you’re someone who has trouble sleeping somewhere unusual no matter how tired you are.
Wow. That’s amazingly ridiculous. Seriously. I’m stunned. You need to do whatever you normally need to do to relax a bit and let your mind wind down (well, aside from anything involving wink-wink-nudge-nudge, as there are after all CAMERAS on you).