The Present State of Ambulatory Monitoring of Sleep

The pace of new developments in any field of clinical investigation is largely determined by the evolution of technology. The extremely rapid innovations in the field of electronics and computers resulted in the production of several ambulatory devices that are used routinely as diagnostic tools by medical specialties. In the field of sleep, standard polysomnography (PSG), the most important investigative procedure, is carried out in a laboratory environment under strict standardized guidelines. Standard PSG has always been known to be a complex procedure, time consuming, and relatively expensive, sometimes providing large amounts of unnecessary data. The impact of rapid evolution of medical technology on sleep investigation has resulted in the introduction of several ambulatory devices for the recording of sleep and its associated physiological parameters that have demonstrable advantages over more complicated forms of evaluation although need not be a replacement for them.