Phrenic nerve stimulation enhances upper airway patency during drug-induced sleep endoscopy in obstructive sleep apnea
Jason L Yu, Katherine P Gouldman, Bailey L Kane, Kaitlin N Manning, Margaret C McEachran, David Bourn, Hartmut Schneider, Alan R Schwartz · 2026
Read Phrenic nerve stimulation enhances upper airway patency during drug-induced sleep endoscopy in obstructive sleep apnea by Jason L Yu, Katherine P Gouldman, Bailey L Kane, Kaitlin N Manning, Margaret C McEachran, David Bourn, Hartmut Schneider, Alan R Schwartz (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13424842.txt.
Description
Yu and colleagues test whether stimulating the breathing nerve can hold the airway open during sleep. Their 2026 paper studies phrenic nerve stimulation in obstructive sleep apnea, where the upper airway repeatedly collapses at night. Stimulating this nerve engages the diaphragm and possibly sensory feedback routes, and the team examined timing during drug-induced sleep endoscopy in 19 patients.
Stimulation delivered from end-expiration into inspiration raised inspiratory flow by about two-thirds and breath volume by about 71 percent over baseline. Repeated sequential stimulation at that timing did better still, roughly tripling flow and volume gains and lifting total ventilation by about 169 percent. Other timings were less effective. The authors conclude end-expiratory stimulation improves airway openness and ventilation, with repeated delivery sustaining the benefit.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Jason L Yu, Katherine P Gouldman, Bailey L Kane, Kaitlin N Manning, Margaret C McEachran, David Bourn, Hartmut Schneider, Alan R Schwartz |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 34 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |