Overview

Obstructive sleep apnea is a medical condition which causes the airway to collapse during sleep thereby blocking a person's ability to breath. Individuals with this condition' experience partial or complete upper airway obstruction during sleep that results in sleep disruption and other physiologic changes. When this condition occurs, the person's "fight or flight" sympathetic nervous system is triggered, which releases adrenal in, races the heart, contracts the vessels and arteries, and causes an interruption or lightening of sleep so that breathing can resume. As a result, persons experiencing sleep apnea do not reach deeper stages of restorative sleep and are in a state of continuous sleep deprivation. This is true despite spending adequate amounts of time in bed sleeping.

Commercial Drivers

An estimated 10 million commercial drivers are licensed to drive more than 8 million large trucks that travel over 225 million miles annually throughout the United States. These trucks and drivers were involved in approximately 5,000 fatal crashes and another 82,000 injury crashes in 2007 and a large percentage of these crashes may have been caused by commercial drivers falling asleep at the wheel as a result of OSA. OSA affects an estimated 2.4 to 6 million commercial drivers, causes excessive sleepiness, and creates a serious public safety risk of sleep-related motor vehicle crashes.

Laws and Guidelines

To deal with this problem, guidelines have been established. Federal statutes, regulations, and medical advisory guidelines establish a binding legal framework governing the licensing and operation of commercial motor vehicles. This framework provides that, given the well known public safety risks associated with the condition, drivers should be screened for sleep apnea and those with suspected or diagnosed sleep apnea must be treated as a condition of continued licensure.