A 55-year-old man who has the same sleep disorder as Joe Biden crashed his motorbike four times in nine months.
The construction worker, whose case has been revealed in a US medical journal, kept falling asleep while behind the wheel due to his excessive daytime sleepiness.
It was so bad that, on the day of his admission, the man closed his eyes and collapsed — bruising his right eye after slamming against the edge of a table.
Physicians diagnosed him with obstructive sleep apnea — which the President, 81, has also been treated for — and prescribed him a breathing machine to open his airways at night.
Biden is the oldest US president at 80, and last June was pictured with marks on his face (circled) consistent with using a CPAP machine
Streets in Vietnam are notoriously chaotic, such as this roundabout pictured above in the country. Experts say excessive sleepiness raises the risk of accidents
The patient, who was from Vietnam, complained of constantly snoring at night and often waking up suddenly gasping for air.
The 55-year-old said that mornings, too, were punctuated with headaches and feelings of drowsiness — and that they had gained 22lbs in two years.
The case was revealed in the American Journal of Case Reports, amid warnings from doctors that excessive sleepiness can raise the risk of traffic accidents.
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is caused by the upper airways becoming blocked during sleep and affects about 39million people in the US every year.
In many cases, it is linked to obesity — which can cause fatty deposits to build up in the airways making them heavier and more likely to collapse when lying down.
But it can also be caused by old age, with muscles in the airways weakening over time making them more likely to collapse when someone sleeps.
It puts people at a much higher risk of dementia, which is believed to be linked to prolonged interrupted sleep.
The patient in Vietnam was a 55-year-old construction worker who was found to be suffering from the same sleep disorder as Joe Biden
Doctors also measured the patient’s neck to diagnose the condition, which is caused by the airways becoming blocked while someone is asleep — leaving them struggling to breathe
President Biden has been suffering from symptoms consistent with OSA since at least last June.
The White House revealed the condition after the President emerged with marks on his face consistent with using a CPAP machine.
He also had symptoms of OSA in 2008 and 2019, physician-to-the-president Dr Kevin O’Connor said, but this was reported to have been resolved following sinus and nasal passage surgeries.
Dr O’Connor says Biden remains a ‘healthy, active, robust’ male who ‘remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the President’.
In the case in Vietnam, the patient was also diagnosed with obesity hypoventilation disorder (OHD) — a breathing disorder that causes someone who is obese to have too much carbon dioxide and too little oxygen in their blood.
Doctors treated the patient by asking him to use a CPAP machine for six hours every night.
After three months, the patient reported improved sleep and now being alert enough to be able to drive.
They also say they had lost nearly 5lbs, and their blood pressure — which had previously been high — had dropped to a normal level.
Their accidents were linked to daytime sleepiness, with the patient confirming they had not consumed alcohol before the crashes.
Doctors revealed the case in part to warn of the dangers of driving while tired, with about 328,000 crashes on US roads linked to drowsiness every year.
The physicians, from a Military Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, wrote in the report: ‘In summary, OSA… manifests symptoms of excessive daytime sleepiness, substantially increasing the risk of traffic accidents.
‘Regrettably, this issue has not received the required attention in Vietnam.’
The CDC says everyone should sleep for seven to nine hours every night on average.
But surveys suggest more than a third of Americans fail to reach this threshold, amid brightly illuminated lights in city centers and a growing plethora of distractions — from televisions to mobile phones and computer games.
