Last updated on April 28th, 2023 at 04:14 pm
I read an article in the Times Online today about “The £400 mask that promises to silence snorers – on the NHS”. The journalist, David Rose, did an OK job in reporting that the government will recommend CPAP to those with moderate or severe symptoms starting next year, but I got the impression he didn’t quite understand the topic at all.
Article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article2351411.ece
Let’s start with the title. A CPAP mask on its own does absolutely nothing. It seems like David Rose hasn’t grasped the fact that there’s an air pump of sorts at the end of it. A mask certainly doesn’t cost £400. More like £100 with another £300 or so for the machine.
He also seems to think CPAP is a cure for snoring, but fails to understand – or at least to put in proper perspective – it’s a therapy for Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) which is something else entirely. There are plenty of people who snore without any consequences other than annoying their bed partners, or neighbours. There are no OSA patients who don’t feel the consequences of their issues.
The following sentence again illustrates he has not done his homework properly, as he seems to think there is no pump involved. “The continuous positive airways pressure (CPAP) devices, worn as masks covering the nose or face, […]”.
Then comes the only exciting bit of the article:
[…] provisional details issued by the watchdog to medical experts last month indicate that the masks could be recommended for patients with moderate or severe symptoms from next year.
I’m not sure how severe the symptoms had to be for the NHS to recommend CPAP prior to this publication by the NICE, but if they now decided to increase the accessibility to CPAP therapy by lowering the symptoms threshold, that can only be a good thing for those who don’t necessarily choke every night but do experience apnoea events.
Mr Rose also fails to mention CPAP equipment can be bought privately. He reckons “[…] the treatment is currently available only through selected NHS trusts and sleep clinics, as some local primary care trusts refuse to fund it.” Of course it’s more sensational to find another way to slam the NHS but if he cares about informing his readers, he could have mentioned the fact there is an alternative to the NHS when it comes to CPAP.
In the comments we find some Times readers recognize the short-comings of this article:
Misleading – people with OSA snore but that’s not why they need CPAP. Untreated, the underlying breathing difficulty can lead to more serious health problems and expense for the NHS. I seriously doubt that NICE has sanctioned the use of CPAP for snoring in general.
One commenter summarizes his or her CPAP experience as follows:
I cannot praise CPAP therapy enough. It has given me a complete new life. I used to be exhausted even after 7 hours’ “sleep” and after 11 a.m. was useless, with my body screaming silently for sleep. Now I am fit until 22h and wake up ready to take on anything.
It’s a shame this journalist didn’t grasp the problem at hand in its entirety. OSA and CPAP can certainly do with mainstream media coverage to help awareness of both the problem as well as the solution. But this article leaves room for improvement. But then again, it does come from the paper whose journalists “have no qualms at all about the hounding, marginalisation, stigmatisation and social exclusion of public snorers“.