Description
Over the last ten years there has been an increase in awareness of the differences in respiration between the sleeping and the waking states. Most of the abnormalities seen in disease are due to the result of these physiological changes superimposed on the underlying abnormality. For this reason it is important to understand how breathing changes during sleep and particularly the differences between non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep (Fig 1). The features of these two sleep states will be compared and their influence on various respiratory disorders examined
