Sleep Medicine

Advanced Care for Sleep Disorders

Lack of sleep can lead to many serious medical problems, including:

• Heart disease
• Depression
• Lower life expectancy

If you’re not getting the rest you need every night, you might have a sleep disorder. The experts at the Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport Sleep Disorders Center can evaluate, diagnose and treat your sleep disorder. We also operate a nationally accredited program to train doctors in sleep medicine, and we conduct research to learn more about sleep disorders.

Sleep Disorders We Treat

Our doctors diagnose and treat a wide range of sleep disorders, including:

• Insomnia: A common sleep disorder that can make it hard to fall asleep or hard to stay asleep or that can cause you to wake up too early and not be able to get back to sleep.
• Narcolepsy: A chronic sleep disorder that causes overwhelming daytime drowsiness. The most typical symptoms are excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy (sudden, uncontrollable muscle weakness), sleep paralysis and hallucinations.
• Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA): A potentially serious sleep disorder. It causes breathing to repeatedly stop and start during sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the muscles in the back of your throat relax too much to allow normal breathing.
• Restless legs syndrome (RLS): A condition that causes an uncontrollable urge to move your legs, usually because of an uncomfortable sensation. It typically happens in the evening or nighttime hours when you're sitting or lying down. Moving eases the unpleasant feeling temporarily.
• REM sleep behavior disorder: Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder is a sleep disorder in which you physically act out vivid, often unpleasant dreams with vocal sounds and sudden, often violent arm and leg movements during REM sleep — sometimes called dream-enacting behavior.
• Parasomnias: Disruptive sleep disorders that can occur during arousals from REM sleep or arousals from nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. They can result in undesirable physical or verbal behaviors, such as walking or talking during sleep.

Diagnosing and Treating Your Sleep Disorder

We’ll perform a number of tests to help us accurately diagnose your sleep disorder, including blood tests, an electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) to screen for heart issues and an MRI scan to rule out any conditions of the brain.

The main test for diagnosing sleep disorders is the sleep study (PSG or polysomnogram). During an overnight sleep study, a sleep technician will monitor you as you sleep, and an automated sleep system will record activity in your brain and body to help us determine what might be causing your sleep issues.

Sometimes we may perform a number of other tests to help us accurately diagnose your sleep disorder, including blood tests, an electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) to screen for heart issues and an MRI scan to rule out any conditions of the brain.

Once we’ve diagnosed your sleep disorder, you and your doctor will work together on a treatment plan personalized for you and your unique needs. This might include wearing a mask connected to a positive airway pressure (PAP) machine while you sleep to help you breathe better.