Medical Services > Sleep and Breathing Disorders

Patients with certain neurologic and musculoskeletal diseases have muscle weakness that affects their mobility and overall health. Among the most serious consequences are breathing complications due to respiratory and coughing muscle weakness. In patients with neuromuscular disorders, respiratory distress can occur even after the common cold. Because patients may be too weak to cough out secretions, bacteria can multiply, leading to pneumonia and respiratory failure.

UT Southwestern Medical Center’s breathing disorders specialists assess and manage patients with neuromuscular diseases to minimize or entirely avoid respiratory complications. We rehabilitate such patients to improve both breathing and coughing function through the use of assistive equipment and training. Our state-of-the-art techniques help to prevent repeated hospitalizations for respiratory failure.

We can help patients with the following disorders:

• Myopathies
  
  
• Muscular dystrophies, such as Duchenne; Becker; limb-girdle; Emert-Dreifuss; facioscapulohumeral; congenital; childhood autosomal recessive; and myotonic
  
  
• Non-Duchenne myopathies, such as congenital and metabolic myopathies (acid maltase deficiency); inflammatory myopathies (polymyositis); diseases of the myoneural junction (myasthenia gravis); mixed connective tissue diseases; and myopathies associated with systemic conditions (cancer, cachexia/anorexia nervosa, medications)
  
  
• Neurological disorders, such as spinal muscular atrophies; motor neuron diseases; poliomyelitis; neuropathies; conditions with diaphragm paralysis; Guillain-Barr syndrome; multiple sclerosis; Friedreich's ataxia; spinal cord lesions; sleep breathing disorders; familial dysautonomia; and Down syndrome
  
  
• Skeletal and connective tissue disorders, such as kyphoscoliosis; osteogenesis imperfecta; rigid spine syndrome; and spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita
  
  
• Restrictive lung disease associated with lung resection, tuberculosis or Milroy's disease

Our breathing disorders specialists carefully evaluate the patient’s medical history and current condition to offer the patient the most appropriate and effective therapies available.

Please visit the Health Library to learn more about breathing disorders due to neuromuscular diseases.