Sleep Disorders in Primary Care

Each of us spend one-third of our lives asleep. Dysfunctions in this basic state lead to declines in quality of life, diminished waking performance, more frequent illness, and increases in both morbidity and mortality. Recent epidemiological data have emphasized the significant contribution of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), one of the most physiological disruptive and dangerous sleep-related diagnosis, to pulmonary, cardiac, endocrine, and cognitive diseases (1–4). Yet sleep medicine is not just a pulmonary subspecialty. The spectrum of sleep disorders mirrors the clinical population of patients in a broad-based practice of primary care (5) (Table 1). Almost all chronic diseases result in physical or mental discomfort for the patient and consistently induce disturbances in the state of sleep.