Central Sleep Apnoea (CSA) is rare in general, and can be caused by certain drug therapies used in pain management, such as opioids, as well as heart failure, or a disease or injury involving the brain, such as:

Stroke

Brain tumor

Viral brain infection

Chronic respiratory disease

    In cases of CSA the airway is actually open but air stops flowing to the lungs because no effort is made to breathe. This is basically because the communication between the brain and the body has been lost, so the automatic action of breathing stops.

    Those with CSA don't often snore, so the condition sometimes goes unnoticed.

    Noticeably, in case of heart failure, CSA is very frequent, with up to 1 patient over 4 being affected. CSA also has a specific pattern in Heart Failure, known as Cheyne-Stokes Respiration (CSR). 

    People with CSR have an abnormal, cyclic pattern of breathing that alternates deeper and sometimes faster breathing with a temporary stop in breathing (apnoea).

   Together, Central Sleep Apnoea and Cheyne-Stokes respiration are known as CSA-CSR, which occurs in 30 to 50% of people with heart failure.