American Sleep Apnea Association to Amplify the Voices of Patients

The American Sleep Apnea Association will bring the voices of sleep apnea patients to the fore in a first-time-ever patient roundtable it is hosting at the Tenth World Conference on Sleep Apnea, to be held in Rome Aug. 27 through Sept. 1.

Meetings on health issues in the past have tended to give little or no attention to the needs, perspectives, and concerns of patients suffering from the diseases under discussion.

Patient participants in the roundtable, drawn from a variety of sleep apnea organizations around the world, will be challenged to formulate a patient's bill of rights. That document will become a key part of an overall call to action that patient groups can subscribe to and help implement.

Two other items are also on the preliminary agenda:

Determining how best to pursue the World Health Organization's goal of decreasing the frequency of noncommunicable diseases including sleep apnea by 25 percent by 2025.

Establishing a date for an annual World Sleep Apnea Awareness Day beginning in 2013.

Sleep apnea is a chronic, life-shortening, often unrecognized disease that afflicts hundreds of millions of people around the world. Left untreated it can lead to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.