Patients recovering from heart surgery may benefit from a treatment used commonly for sleep-disordered breathing called CPAP therapy, a new study suggests.

CPAP, which stands for continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), may help prevent pneumonia and other pulmonary complications after heart surgery and cut rates of readmission to the ICU, according to a report in the medical journal Chest.

With CPAP therapy, which is primarily used for the nighttime breathing disorder known as obstructive sleep apnea, the patient wears a face mask through which a device delivers pressurized air to keep the airways open during sleep.

Dr. Alexander Zarbock, from the University of Muenster, Germany, and colleagues assessed the benefits of CPAP in the setting of heart surgery by randomly assigning 500 patients scheduled for heart surgery to receive uninterrupted CPAP for at least 6 hours after surgery, or standard therapy, which includes CPAP but only at 10-minute intervals every 4 hours.

Results showed that uninterrupted CPAP therapy significantly improved blood “oxygenation” without altering heart rate or blood pressure.

Patients who received CPAP also experienced reduced pulmonary complications, including hypoxemia (lower than normal levels of oxygen in their blood) and pneumonia, and were less apt to require readmission to the ICU.

As well as being effective in improving outcomes after heart surgery, CPAP therapy “is a well-tolerated, simple and inexpensive technique,” the investigators note.

SOURCE: Chest, May 2009.