低氧負荷(Hypoxic burden, HB)是睡眠醫學中一個新興且愈來愈被廣泛採用的指標，特別是對於阻塞性睡眠呼吸中止症(OSA)，低氧負荷比目前臨床上最常用的呼吸中止低通氣指數(AHI)更能有效地衡量心血管疾病風險、器官受損嚴重程度（如腦部、心臟）和死亡率。 Hypoxic burden is an advanced, and increasingly used metric in sleep medicine, specifically for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). It goes beyond traditional measurements, the Apnea-Hypopnea Index (AHI), in evaluating cardiovascular disease risk, organ damage severity (such as brain, heart) and mortality. 傳統的AHI將每次呼吸事件視為相同，只統計呼吸事件的頻率；而低氧負荷則量化血氧飽和度下降的累積量（一個event從onset到恢復，底下面積的積分），綜合掉血氧的程度和持續時間，而不僅僅是頻率。 因此，低氧負荷能更精確地反映缺氧的實際嚴重程度。 AHI treats every event the same and only counts the frequency of breathing events, but hypoxic burden quantifies the cumulative amount of oxygen desaturation, which reveals the depth and duration of hypoxia, not just frequency. So the hypoxic burden provides a more precise look at the actual severity of oxygen deprivation. 一項研究發現27.5%的輕度阻塞性睡眠呼吸中止症的患者(AHI 5~14.9)實際上有較高的低氧負荷(> 88%min/hr)，這解釋了為什麼一些「輕度」睡眠呼吸中止症患者症狀卻很明顯。所以即使AHI較低，低氧負荷也...