Like most teens, Austin Wales was never a big fan of getting out of bed in the morning. But unlike his friends, who managed to perk up as the day wore on, Wales preferred crawling back under the covers to doing most things.
It wasn’t until his senior year of high school, after years of chronic sleepiness, other unusual symptoms and a slew of doctors visits and medical
tests, that Wales and his family finally learned that he didn’t just need a little more shut eye—Wales had severe sleep apnea and narcolepsy.
For Wales and the estimated hundreds of thousands of other Arizonans with sleep disorders, Barrow now offers a new resource for a better night’s sleep. In July, the institute opened the Barrow/ Areté Sleep Center, a jointly-operated sleep diagnostic program that treats patients of all ages.
While there are other sleep centers in the Valley, the expertise that co-medical directors Rama Maganti, MD, and Maria Martinez, MD, bring to Barrow’s program makes it unique.
Pulmonologist and neurologist combine their sleep expertise
Dr. Maganti is a neurologist and board- certified sleep specialist, a fact that is in itself unique, as most sleep specialists are pulmonologists. And yet, many patients with complex neurological disorders such as epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease also have sleep problems. Dr. Maganti was hired two years ago to help fill that void, and he’s currently the only Barrow neurologist who practices sleep medicine.
Dr. Martinez, on the other hand, is a pediatric pulmonologist and is believed to be the only pediatric board-certified sleep specialist in the state. Dr. Martinez came to St. Joseph’s in 2004 from North Carolina. When she realized that Arizona didn’t have adequate resources to treat children with sleep issues, she began pushing to form a center.
The result is a comprehensive program that can treat patients of all ages and with a variety of conditions.
“We can treat patients with garden-variety sleep disorders, but we also have an expertise in more complex pediatric and neurological conditions that is hard to find,” says Dr. Maganti.
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Left untreated, sleep disorders can |
Passing out 30 times a day
Wales falls into the more complex category. His long road toward a diagnosis began as a toddler, when he briefly passed out one day after playing in the warm Arizona sun. His family chalked it up to the heat, but as he grew older, it began to happen more frequently. By the time he reached high school, Wales would sometimes pass out as many as 30 times a day.
“As it got worse, we started thinking that maybe there was something more to this than just the heat,” says his mother, Sue Wales. “We went to cardiologists and endocrinologists, but nobody could find anything wrong with him.”
Finally, a scan revealed a venous malformation in Wales’ brain, and his physician sent him to Barrow. While the follow-up appointment eventually led to the discovery of a large mass in his sphenoid sinus cavity, it also led to another discovery.
“The neurologist overheard Austin snoring in the waiting room and told us that Austin had the worst sleep apnea that he had ever heard,” says Mrs. Wales.“He told us to get him into a sleep clinic right away.”
Wales eventually underwent two surgeries to remove the mass, which was benign but which may have been causing pressure on the blood vessels in his brain. He also started seeing Dr. Maganti and underwent an outpatient sleep study, which showed he experienced more than 50 events an hour. People with normal sleep patterns usually experience less than 15.
