Went in expecting a date. Came out with a referral for an overnight sleep study and a leaflet about a machine that blows air up your nose.
Bit of context: I snore, apparently spectacularly, my wife has been saying so for years and I've been ignoring her for exactly as long. I do nod off in the afternoons but I put that down to being up at 4am for the bakery. The nurse asked me about the snoring, asked whether I ever wake up gasping, wrote a lot down, and next thing I know my sleeve is "pending the sleep study result".
What I want to know from people who've been through it. Is this standard for everyone or did I flag something? Does it actually delay the surgery by months? And if it does come back positive, am I going to be sent home with the mask thing before they'll operate, because I'll be honest, the idea of learning to sleep in that on top of everything else is not thrilling me. I've waited long enough for this date already.
Standard-ish, but the snoring answer definitely got you fast-tracked to it. They asked me the same questions and I sailed past because I don't snore.
For what it's worth, two people in my pre-op group had exactly this. Neither of them lost their date over it, it just moved by a few weeks while the study got done and read.
Right, this is my specialist subject.
Sleep study, positive, machine at home six weeks before surgery, and I was FURIOUS about it at the time. Felt like one more obstacle between me and the thing I'd been waiting two years for. Wore it under protest, hated it for about ten days, and then something odd happened: I stopped falling asleep at the wheel in the car park at lunchtime. I hadn't even realised I was doing that until it stopped.
The bit nobody explained to me until afterwards was why they care so much before an operation rather than after. It's the anaesthetic. Something about the airway behaving differently when you're sedated. My anaesthetist was noticeably happier with me once I'd been using the machine, and I was on the ward with the thing beside my bed for both nights.
Pete, honest advice from a fellow grump: don't fight it. It's weeks, not months, and it made my surgery day less complicated rather than more.
Pete, this is routine rather than a red flag, and Alan has already given you the main reason from the patient side. Let me fill in the clinical logic, because it makes the wait a lot easier to swallow.
Obstructive sleep apnoea is common in people coming forward for bariatric surgery and frequently undiagnosed, which is why the screening questions you were asked, snoring, witnessed pauses in breathing, waking unrefreshed, daytime sleepiness, exist. Answer yes to several and most units will want a sleep study before they anaesthetise you. The concern is not the sleeve itself, it is the airway under sedation and in the hours afterwards: someone with untreated apnoea is more likely to obstruct, to need closer monitoring overnight, and to have a bumpier recovery from the anaesthetic. Knowing in advance changes how the anaesthetist plans your case and where you are nursed afterwards. It is preparation, not obstruction.
If the study is positive you will usually be asked to use CPAP for a period beforehand, and yes, you bring it into hospital with you and use it on the ward. Typical delay in most services is measured in weeks: the study, the report, then a fitting appointment. Two things worth knowing. First, sleep apnoea is one of the conditions that supports having surgery in the first place, not one that counts against you, and it commonly improves as weight comes off, which is part of why the site's guide to whether you are a candidate lists it among the qualifying conditions. Second, improvement does not mean you get to bin the machine unilaterally: any change to CPAP after surgery is decided by the sleep service on a repeat assessment, not by how rested you feel. People do stop using it on their own once the weight drops and then wonder why the daytime sleepiness creeps back.
What I would not do is treat the referral as a sign something is wrong with you. In clinic this is one of the more ordinary things that happens between assessment and a date.
Just here to say the overnight study itself was much less of an ordeal than I'd built up. Wires, a clip on the finger, a box strapped on, and a very odd night's sleep in my own bed. Not a hospital stay. I assumed it would be a lab with someone watching me through glass and it absolutely wasn't.
Update, and it's a mixed bag. Study came back positive, moderate apparently, so I'm now the proud owner of a machine and a face that looks like a fighter pilot at bedtime. Three weeks in and I'm sleeping through instead of surfacing constantly, which I didn't know I was doing.
Delay ended up being about five weeks, so Donna was right and my worst-case month-counting was wrong. Alan, I was fully prepared to hate you for the "don't fight it" line and instead I'm annoyingly grateful. Sleeve date is back on the table, waiting for the letter.
Ha. Give it a year and you'll be the one telling some furious bloke in this section not to fight it.
This thread locked automatically 60 days after its last post. If you landed here worrying about your own weight, diet stage, or symptoms, that conversation belongs with your bariatric team, who have your notes; a forum full of strangers doesn't.
