Bruce Neal

Two points here : first, while it’s an intuitively appealing finding, it is statistically rather weak, second, good adherence is hard to achieve with current therapeutic options for PAP. If a new, very well-tolerated mode of PAP therapy is identified, it would be really helpful to do a large outcome trial to try and confirm this tantalizing observation.

Patients with sleep apnea, who are often at increased cardiovascular risk, need rigorous management with other indicated therapies, such as blood pressure lowering, statins, and antithrombotic drugs, i think the most interesting finding of the meta-analysis is that the best estimate of the effect of obstructive sleep apnea treatment on risk of major adverse cardiovascular events is very similar to the reduction in risk seen with aspirin, beta-blockers, or statin medications.