DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2017.v05i01.048

Pages: 249-254

There has been an interest in the nature of sleep and dreams throughout recorded history. Hippocrates in his texts refers to disordered sleep and dreams. The monograph, The Philosophy of Sleep was written by the Scottish physician, Robert MacNish in 1830, in which he regarded sleep as the intermediate state between wakefulness and death, exemplifying the passive nature of sleep. The development of the EEG in 1929 by the German Psychiatrist, Hans Berger allowed the examination of brain activity during sleep. A series of investigation in the 1930‟s established the characteristics of an EEG during sleep with the features of high amplitude slow waves and spindles and during wakefulness alpha rhythm and lower amplitude background rhythms. Sleep disorders are common in patients of COPD. Less rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and arousals during period of desaturation are often noted in patients with COPD. Hypoxemia during sleep in patients with COPD has significant cardiovascular, neurophysiological and hematological consequences. Cardiac dysarrhythmias, polychythemia, pulmonary and systemic hypertension, corpulmonale are known to occur with increase precedence culminating into nocturnal death.