[Sleep-related breathing disorders - historical development, current status, future prospects]

Sleep-related breathing disorders are common adult illnesses in Western countries and classified as either dominant obstructive sleep apnoea or dominant central sleep apnoea. Cheyne-Stokes Respiration is part of the spectrum of CSA. The earliest descriptions of patients who presumably suffered from sleep apnoea were made in the 19th century. The term ''Pickwickian'' in connection with sleepy patients was introduced in 1889. The first electrophysiological sleep recordings of Pickwickian patients and the understanding of the syndrome as disordered breathing in sleep, were made during the late 1950s and 1960s at the universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg in Germany. The term sleep apnoea syndrome was introduced by Guilleminault from Stanford. The introduction of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy by C. E. Sullivan and co-workers gave an enormous impetus to the field of sleep-disordered breathing. Its recognition as a public health problem was facilitated by the Wisconsin study, investigating the prevalence of sleep apnoea in the middle-aged general population. Nowadays obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is recognised as an independent risk factor for a wide range of clinical conditions, such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, heart failure, arrhythmias, stroke, diabetes, and depression. This article focuses on issues related to OSA and CSA/CSR, their pathogenesis, interaction with other comorbidities including cardiovascular diseases. Future research will focus on treatment effects on cardiovascular and metabolic outcomes in sleep apnoea and on the pathophysiological mechanisms responsible for the inflammatory state and cardiovascular morbidity in the syndrome. Other potential areas of research include biochemical markers, new diagnostic and therapeutic modalities.