The second and final Adult Sleep Clinical Core Curriculum session will continue exploring sleep disorders when paired with other conditions, this time focusing on pregnancy. The session will also tackle the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in the field and sleep medicine in transportation. It takes place from 11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m. ET, Monday, May 18, in Room W311E (Level III, OCCC West Concourse).

“We are touching on broader-reaching effects of sleep apnea and then going beyond sleep apnea, thinking about special populations and areas that clinicians and patients face as challenges,” said session Co-Chair Katherine Dudley, MD, MPH, an instructor at Harvard Medical School who practices at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The session includes three 25-minute presentations:

• AI tools in sleep
• Pregnancy and sleep
• Transportation and sleep

Time is set aside after the presentations for questions and discussion about the topics.

Everywhere we turn, AI is joining the conversation; sleep is no exception, Dr. Dudley said. “It’s a really interesting area that comes up regularly in conversations with colleagues, in the lay press, and with patients. Exploring how AI has crept into the sleep field, particularly the clinic exam room, is definitely cutting-edge. I can’t wait for that talk.”

Obstructive sleep apnea is a prevalent yet underdiagnosed condition in pregnancy, often caused by physiological changes such as weight gain and hormonal fluctuations. “Sleep apnea has unfortunately not really been addressed widely in the pregnant population, and it can cause downstream effects both to the mother and to the infant,” said session Co-Chair Michelle Zeidler, MD, professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, and the Sleep Fellowship Program Director at UCLA.

Dr. Dudley explained that, instead of thinking about these conditions separately, “like someone’s pregnant and ‘comma’ they have sleep apnea,” it’s really about developing an integrated management strategy that treats them as overlapping, co‑occurring issues rather than separate problems.

The objectives of the Adult Sleep Clinical Core Curriculum Symposia are to integrate new sleep medicine guidelines into clinical practice, equip clinicians to better counsel patients on available treatment options for sleep-disordered breathing, and identify knowledge gaps in the treatment of patients with sleep-related disorders.

The ATS Clinical Core Curriculum focuses on key topics in the areas of adult and pediatric pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine. The topics are aligned with corresponding MOC Medical Knowledge modules and designed to help clinicians stay up to date with important information relevant to their medical practices and to provide an opportunity for clinicians to evaluate their knowledge and skills while earning MOC Medical Knowledge points.