Role of continuous positive airway pressure therapy for sleep disordered breathing in prevention of stroke recurrence and other vascular events and in improvement of neuropsychological outcome- A Prospective longitudinal study.

The Prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea and sleep disordered breathing in general in patients with stroke has been found to range from 50% to 80%. Recently, SDB has been shown to be an independent risk factor for stroke. However, their is their is little evidence in existing literature  on whether treatment of SDB with CPAP therapy, has any effect on prevention of new vascular events, especially recurrence after stroke. This study being planned to assess if treatment of SDB with CPAP in patients with stroke has any role in prevention of new onset vascular events(cardiac ischemia, infarction, stroke recurrence) or death; and whether it has any role in the neuropsychological or cognitive and neurological outcome following stroke. Our hypothesis is that patients of stroke with SDB can obtain benefit with CPAP therapy as regards occurrence of new vascular events and their neurological outcome. The study is proposed to be randomized control trial conscious patients of stroke evaluated clinically and through a polysomnography, diagnosed to have SDB forming the population under study. One group shall be randomized to CPAP therapy and slandered medical therapy and the other to receive only best medical therapy. The primary end point of the study would be occurrence of new vascular events or death and the secondary end points would be neuropsychological outcome and neurological outcome at 3,6 and 12 months.