A development of pillow for detection and restraining of snoring

Snoring is a breathing noise caused by coupled oscillation of the walls of the airway as the air passes through. It occurs in at least 20% of the general population. Snoring is recognized as a cardinal symptom of sleep apnea. The snorers, compared with non-snorers, generate more negative inspiration pressure, prolonged inspiration time, and limitation of respiratory flow. Therefore, it may cause impaired daytime performance, sleepiness and nocturnal awakenings, which may increase traffic accidents. In this study, a pillow with contact microphones was developed to detect snoring sounds and restrain snoring by inflation of air bladder located inside the pillow. Experiment was performed to adjust the threshold value in order to separate the snoring sounds from the environment sounds. Then, clinical evaluation was performed at the sleep center to verify the effectiveness of the pillow. A volunteer was participated for two nights. Regular foam pillow and developed pillows were used for the first and second nights, respectively. Snoring times were reduced 49.8%, the average snoring episodes in minutes were increased 0.2 minutes (12 seconds), and longest snoring episodes were reduced down to 43.8% with the use of developed pillow. It means that the volunteer underwent much less snoring with the use of the developed pillow. The further study would be continued for more wide clinical studies with various inflation/deflation conditions of air bladder. (C) 2010 IEEE