THE first advanced sleep laboratory in Wales - with the expertise to tackle a range of sleep disorders - has been set up in a Gwent hospital.

In the lab on the fourth floor at Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny, patients are fitted with a range of sensors linked to equipment that can measure more than 20 bodily signals to help sleep expert Dr Jose Thomas unravel the mysteries behind conditions such as sleepwalking, narcolepsy, and REM Behaviour Disorder.

Sleep labs where the diagnosis and treatment of sleep apnoea - disruptions in breathing during sleep that can in turn disrupt sleep - is carried out have been established in many hospitals in recent years.

But until now, specialist centres for dealing with most other sleep disorders have only been available over the border in England.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that we spend a third of our lives sleeping, there are a range of problems that can occur during that significant period of time.

Sleep is not merely a passive state but a complex function of the brain, for the brain, and during it, many things can go awry in the co-ordinated function of organ systems.

“Seventy-80 per cent of referrals are for suspected sleep apnoea, but it is only one of more than 80 sleep disorders,” said Dr Jose Thomas, the consultant in respiratory medicine whose team sees patients at the Nevill Hall sleep lab.

“Sleep medicine tends not to be recognised here as a separate speciality and also, dealing with sleep disorders is not always down to a single speciality. For instance, narcolepsy is a chronic neurological condition.”

A brain disorder that disrupts control of sleeping and waking, narcolepsy affects one in 2,000 people.

Sleepwalking - which affects four per cent of adults and 17 per cent of children - and REM Behaviour Disorder (which can involve the acting out of dreams whilst asleep), are among other conditions that the Nevill Hall lab can help diagnose.

It has been set up with the help of funding from Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, the Nevill Hall Hospital Thrombosis and General Research Fund, and with clinical research funding.

“We are very grateful for the funding we get, which is helping provide a sleep technician and a junior technician, though some of that funding is for a limited time,” said Dr Thomas, who initially undertook training as a sleep technician himself, to get the lab up and running.

“There weren’t any in Wales at the time, and I found it easier to get a training attachment in the USA than in England.

“It is a labour intensive process because the technician has to watch the patients overnight and be paid for that, and then they are not here during the day.

“We have the capacity to study six patients a week. We could take patients from across Wales, but we have stopped taking them unless their health board pays for it.

“I will see those patients referred here and will arrange a test depending on what I think their problem might be.”

Brain waves, eye movements and muscle, respiratory, and heart activity are among the signals monitored during a sleep test.