Obstructive Sleep Apnoea

Dai Havard Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to have secured this debate and to be—[Interruption.]

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

Order. Could we have quiet, please, including in the Public Gallery?

[Julie Hilling]

Thank you, Mr Havard. I am very pleased to be serving under your chairmanship. You will not be surprised to learn that I first got interested in this subject from a road safety perspective. When a member of the Select Committee on Transport, I received an e-mail from the parents of a young woman who was killed by a lorry driver who fell asleep at the wheel, so I raised the issue on a number of occasions when we were doing different inquiries on things such as freight transportation and road safety. However, as soon as I started to talk about sleep apnoea, I discovered that it was far more common than I had thought—with a number of friends and acquaintances declaring that they had it—and that, in Bolton West, predicted rates of the condition are higher than the national average. I asked for the debate today to coincide with the launch of the British Lung Foundation’s obstructive sleep apnoea health economics report, because an estimated 1.5 million people have the condition in the UK, yet only 330,000 people are currently diagnosed and treated.

OSA affects people of all ages, including up to 4% of middle-aged men, 2% of middle-aged women and 20% of those aged over 70. Although not everyone with OSA is overweight, many are, and with an increasingly overweight and ageing population, it is anticipated that the rates of OSA will increase in the coming years.

What is obstructive sleep apnoea? It is a condition whereby the muscles in the throat relax, causing an obstruction in the airway during sleep, meaning that a person stops breathing. Some people stop breathing hundreds of times a night, and others have periods during which their breathing is restricted. Untreated OSA can have a profound impact on the quality of life of those affected and it has been proven to cause high blood pressure, as well as being associated with a host of other health conditions such as heart disease, heart failure, stroke and diabetes. The life of someone whose OSA is not treated can be dramatically shortened. Correct treatment has been shown to increase the probability of survival of OSA patients by 25%.

There is a strong link between OSA and an increased risk of road traffic accidents, with individuals who have uncontrolled OSA three to seven times more likely than the general driving population to have an accident on the road.

--- Later in debate ---

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on securing the debate and thank her for allowing me to make a very short contribution. The link between OSA and road traffic accidents is well established, and I was alerted to that fact when the nephew of one of my constituents was killed by a lorry driver with undiagnosed sleep apnoea. According to medical experts, 10% to 20% of lorry drivers—that could be as many as 40,000 drivers—may suffer from sleep apnoea. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents estimates that one third of road accidents are caused by somebody at work. In 2012, the number of people killed in road accidents was 1,754, so we are talking about approximately 600 deaths involving people who drive for work. [Interruption.]

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

Order. I am going to have to stop you, because we have a procedure issue here. The Minister did not understand that you were going to make a contribution.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

I am happy for the hon. Lady to make a contribution, but it needs to be brief.

[Meg Munn]

I am coming to the end, Mr Havard. In fact, I would have finished—

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

If I had not intervened.