Dr. Hsien Young joins LVMC as Sleep Medicine Specialist

LVMC is pleased to announce that Dr. Hsien C. Young will begin seeing patients at Lompoc Health and our Sleep Disorder Center starting in November. 

Dr. Young, who is board certified in neurology and sleep medicine, will spend two days each week at Lompoc Health clinics. 

Dr. Young received his medical degree from the University of Washington School of Medicine. He completed his internship in internal medicine at UW. Dr. Young completed a residency in neurology at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, where he was named Resident of the Year, among other honors. 

Dr. Young also had fellowships in Sleep Medicine and Neurophysiology at USC and was appointed Assistant Clinical Professor of Neurology at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. 

Prior to coming to LVMC, Dr. Young was a specialist in Neurology and Sleep Medicine at the Sansum Clinic in Santa Barbara. 

In his young adulthood, Dr. Young initially pursued a career in fine arts and later graphic design. As a young man, he was working in graphic design at ad agencies when he met a group of medical students and became interested in their academic pursuits. That, coupled with talking to a family friend who was a pediatrician, led him to his current career in medicine. 

“I got to thinking, being a physician is a wonderful career,” he recalled. 

When he was studying neurology, he became fascinated about sleep medicine and pursued a fellowship in the specialty.  

“As a neurologist, I found that patients who suffered from strokes and dementia often had untreated sleep apnea and that got me really interested in pursuing the treatment and management of sleep apnea.” 

With studies showing that one out of four people suffer from sleep apnea, Dr. Young said it became his “full-time passion now to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients for sleep apnea disorder.” 

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder that causes people to stop breathing or breathe shallowly while they sleep. The pauses may last a few seconds to a few minutes and can happen many times each night. The most common type is obstructive sleep apnea, which is caused by the muscles in the back of the throat relaxing too much, blocking the airway. It can be treated with lifestyle changes, such as losing weight, or by the use of mouthpieces, surgery and breathing devices such as continuous positive air pressure (CPAP) machines.  

Having sleep apnea can increase the risk of conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and diabetes. 

Dr. Young noted that he’s looking forward to helping sleep apnea patients with a newer generation of treatment called “Inspire,” which he deems “cutting edge.” Inspire is a surgically implanted device that treats obstructive sleep apnea by stimulating the throat muscles to keep the airway open during sleep. 

In Lompoc, Dr. Young will work with Lompoc Health otolaryngologists Dr. Sheppard Peng and Dr. Angie Song to implant the Inspire device. 

“Lompoc is providing it before any other hospitals,” Dr. Young said. “No one in Santa Barbara does it. It’s something that’s cutting edge for sleep medicine.” 

Dr. Young went to grade school through medical school in a 10-mile radius in Seattle and moved to Santa Barbara in 2006, where he worked for Sansum Clinic. He has spent the past 14 years as the medical director for the Lompoc Health Sleep Disorder Center. While at Sansum, he noticed that at least one-third of his patients were coming to him from north of Santa Barbara. 

If someone has symptoms of sleep apnea, Dr. Young will see patients in the clinic, to determine if they qualify for a sleep study. Sometimes, symptoms can be treated with medicine. The Sleep Disorder Center processes about 10 sleep studies per week, with about 85 percent of patients testing positive for sleep apnea and needing further treatment, he said. The Sleep Center is certified to test anyone age 6 and older. 

Dr. Young said his career change from fine art and graphic design to medicine was a good one for him. Now, as he’s doing more sleep medicine than neurology, he’s enthused about starting a new chapter in his career at Lompoc Health. 

“In neurology very few patients actually get better,” Dr. Young said. “In sleep medicine, almost everyone improves. That feedback is really good.”