Sleep clinical trials at University of California Health

Patients with chronic pain who use opioids appear to be at increased risk for breathing issues during sleep, termed sleep disordered breathing (SDB). Treatment of SDB often consists of use of a device during sleep that provides continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) via a mask interface. The goal of this study is to determine whether patients with chronic pain who use opioids and have SDB might benefit from the use of CPAP in terms of sleep quality, pain, quality of life, and other measures. In addition, the study will examine whether these individuals are able to adhere to CPAP, which will be important for future studies. Lastly, we anticipate that CPAP won't work for everyone due to the changes that opioids can cause in breathing patterns. We will examine how often CPAP is ineffective, and whether we can predict which individuals are least likely to resolve their SDB with CPAP.

Subjects will complete an electronic consent form and then fill out questionnaires on a tablet computer. The answers to the questions will be recorded to a secure electronic database, along with the results of a clinical overnight sleep study performed separately from this research study (this research study will not perform any overnight visits). After the overnight study diagnosis researchers will see which answers are most commonly given in association with each diagnosis. In addition, we will assess to what extent the sleep disorder impacts the patient's perception of his/her quality of life.