Do RERAs = UARS?

[DankShroud]

Are respiratory effort related arousals the only measure used by sleep labs to diagnose UARS? If my sleep clinic measures RERAs to diagnose UARS and tells me that I don't have UARS, is that reliable? Or does UARS involve subtler breathing limitations that most clinics cannot detect? Basically, if my clinic recognizes UARS as a real syndrome and measures it with RERAs, is it reliable?

[jnk...]

My understanding is that each insurance company determines what conditions it recognizes and what it accepts as proof of the conditions.

Here is a little history that may help: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3899312/

That source says/asks, in part:

What are Medicare coverage policies on such patients? What are the policies of other insurance carriers who deny coverage for RERA-related sleep disordered breathing? This environment may influence sleep specialists to ignore scoring rules and label RERAs as hypopneas for the very good reason of attempting to treat poorly responding patients who suffer residual sleepiness. But such approaches undermine the science supported by the AASM's position to score and calculate the correct RDI. Regrettably, these idiosyncratic insurance coverage positions may lead some sleep physicians to discount “low AHI/high RDI” disorders, because they are not a covered diagnosis.

In closing, some research has shown a need to include the diagnosis and treatment of the most subtle obstructive breathing events (FLEs, RERAs, UARS). And, because RERAs and RDI are both scientifically validated, the argument for optional scoring seems weak. In our opinion, the field of sleep medicine would benefit from a consistent use of its carefully determined and scorable metrics for the objective evaluation and treatment of sleep disordered breathing. --Frequency and Accuracy of “RERA” and “RDI” Terms in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine from 2006 through 2012. Barry Krakow, M.D., et al. J Clin Sleep Med. 2014 Feb 15; 10(2): 121–124.

Color added by me.