What Happens During a Sleep Study? Dr. Anthony Izzo Explains Saint Vincent Hospital’s Sleep Lab

How Doctor’s examine Sleep Health and the Brain

By-Hank Stolz
Graphic-Radio Worcester/ Photo: Saint Vincent Hospital

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Worcester, MA-Dr. Anthony Izzo, Associate Chief of Neurology and Sleep Specialist Neurologist at St. Vincent Hospital, discusses the growing awareness around sleep health and the services available at St. Vincent’s newly expanded sleep disorders lab.

Dr. Izzo tells Hank Stolz on Radio Worcester, “Sleep is really a foundational part of not only our overall body health, but specifically our brain health.” He talks about the Sleep Lab at St. Vincent’s, “We’ve expanded from six beds up to a full seven beds. This allows those one-to-one patients, those higher needs patients to be attended to by a single technologist and we still have six other beds for everybody else.” and he tells us what these upgrades mean, “Not only are we monitoring people’s sleep to come up with diagnoses as to what may be affecting the quality of their sleep at nighttime, but we’re also for some patients working on finding effective treatments for them in real time during their night in the sleep lab.”

“No one’s watching you sleep. The technologists will apply sensors to your head, to your body to help see what your quality of sleep looks like in real time during the night. They then go to a separate control room where they’re monitoring your breathing patterns.”  Izzo said they do use video, “We do record video and that’s helpful for when we evaluate patients for what we call complex nocturnal behaviors. So sleep walking, sleep talking, acting out your dreams at night.” “It’s really helpful for us as physicians to have that video recorded so we can correlate what’s happening with patient’s brainwaves, patient’s breathing, patient’s hearts when these events happen.”

Number one sleep disorder, “Sleep apnea is one of the most common sleep disorders out there and some estimates say that about 40 to 60% of the population has some degree of sleep apnea, which is huge. That means that most people are undiagnosed.”

To get in touch with Dr. Izzo,  “They can call my practice, Community Neuroscience Services at 508-363-9030, or they can go to my website, communityneuroservices.com where we have an online portal for patients to request appointments.”