Causes and clinical features of central sleep apnea

Central sleep apnea (CSA) is a kind of sleep-disordered breathing, which is characterized by temporary loss of inspiratory ventilatory effort during sleep.In contrast to obstructive sleep apnea, CSA has lower prevalence clinically and may be less understood, however, central apneas occur in many pathophysiological conditions and result in pathophysiological consequences, depending on different causes or mechanisms.The causes and basic clinical features of CSA were introduced in this paper. Key words: Central sleep apnea; Reason; Clinical features