What is PAP therapy?
PAP stands for postive airway pressure therapy. It refers to when air is delivered to a patient at a level above that of the atmospheric pressure. When we are discussing patients using PAP for sleep disorders, an interface held on with straps is usually used. PAP therapy may take a number of forms and new modes of this therapy are devised regularly. The main forms of PAP used for treating obstructive sleep apnea is CPAP and APAP. Other forms of PAP include bilevel ventilation where the device acts like a respirator (artificial breathing machine) to increase the patients breathing. This type of therapy is usually indicated when the person has a disorder of shallow breathing in sleep know as nocturnal hypoventilation. Newer modes of PAP include adaptive servo ventilation. These devices use modern computing to treat central apnea in those cases were more simple modes are shown to be ineffective.
