There was a study done in 2008 where surgeons wanted to find out how many surgical patients were undiagnosed with sleep apnea, presumably because it had an impa

There was a study done in 2008 where surgeons wanted to find out how many surgical patients were undiagnosed with sleep apnea, presumably because it had an impact on the operating table. The results were that 20% of patients had sleep apnea and 90% of them were not diagnosed. Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19186102/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19186102/ Additionally, let's assume a person has a 15% likelihood of being a surgical patient Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5765448/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5765448/. That means in 2008, when the population of the US was about 300 million, there were between 8.1 million and 54 million people undiagnosed with sleep apnea. The range being dependent on how representative the surgical patient study is on the general population (from assuming ALL people with sleep apnea are also surgical patients to assuming surgery is completely independent of apnea), so likely closer to 50 million than 8 million imo. 20% of today's population is 68million. Informal Google searching puts yearly CPAP sales at 8million per year in the US. Recommended use is for 5 years. This puts 8million sales per year in line for treating 40 million people with sleep apnea. Looks to me like we actually might have room to increase our prescription rate still. Fun fact, I am part of that diagnosis statistic. I was diagnosed in 2016, and estimated to have had it pretty much my whole life, so I was undiagnosed in 2008 and I also never had surgery. Turns out you don't need to be medically obese to have sleep apnea either. I'd say we are actually fixing one of the countries major medical problems and not overprescribing CPAP machines at all.