Wojciech Kukwa, Poland
How did you get involved in OSA field?
So my Father is an ENT, and he was privileged to be on scholarships in the 70’s and 80’s in the USA, where the sleep medicine was just being “born”, he met Professor Christian Guilleminault back then, published one of the first papers on cephalometry etc. He was first to bring this idea back here to Poland and all these years he was working to improve surgical methods of SDB treatment. I found the problem of OSA very interesting at the very beginning of my ENT residency. And stuck with it 🙂
How is this work in conjunction with your specialty training?
As much as possible. I keep in mind that the problem of SDB is upper airways.
How do you see ideal collaboration between doctors of surgical and non-surgical specialties?
By understanding that non-surgical treatment is the first-line treatment in more severe cases of OSA. And that at the same time one treatment does not fit all. Ideally, each patient should be consulted by both, ENT, and pulmonologist.
What kind of problems you encounter at your practice?
All kinds of problems. But I try to overcome them as much as possible.
How do you see OSA diagnostic and treatment in the future?
I feel the diagnosis of OSA has to be personal, home-based and long-lasting. It can’t be a one-night study, because in such a model as we have today, many patients are really misdiagnosed.
Can you name an article or two that you have read in the last year and you think have influenced understanding/diagnostics/treatment of OSA?
I feel that 2019 article by Nakano et al “Tracheal Sound Analysis Using a Deep Neural Network to Detect Sleep Apnea” is such a paper. Nakano published a very interesting paper in 2004 in Sleep Journal showing a validation of sound-based OSA detection. I believe this is a very promising path of research toward a simple and reliable method of OSA diagnostics which could be home-based, and personal. This is also a research area of my interest.
Asst. Prof. Wojciech Kukwa, MD, PhD
ENT Specialist
More info about the speaker here.