Advances and New Approaches to Managing Sleep-Disordered Breathing Related to Chronic Pulmonary Disease.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common disease affecting about 20 million US adults. Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) problems are frequent and poorly characterized for patients with COPD. Both the well-known success of noninvasive ventilation (NIV) in the acute COPD exacerbation in the hospital setting and that NIV is the cornerstone of chronic therapy for SDBs have urged the attention of the medical community to determine the impact of NIV on chronic COPD management with and without coexisting SDBs. Early observational studies showed decreased long-term survival rates on patients with COPD with concomitant chronic hypercapnia when compared with normocapnic patients.