Home sleep apnea testing auto-interpretation.

Recent advances in sleep medicine have led to the development of various validated diagnostic devices for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Despite limitations, there has been an increase in the use of home sleep apnea tests (HSAT). The accuracy of HSAT may be limited by the inability of its automated signal analysis to differentiate between artifacts and the target physiological signal, leading to erroneous test interpretations with management implications. We present a 60-year-old male with a mechanical heart valve diagnosed with OSA. Six months post-intervention follow-up, The HSAT report indicated loud snoring 100% of the time. After carefully reviewing the raw HSAT data and history, the source of the non-physiological high-level sound was identified as the mechanical heart valve, and the patient was reassured. This case highlights how trusting only automated analysis can miss important information and arrive at misleading conclusions.