Lt. Col. Vincent Dr. Mysliwiec (my-slee-vich), M.D., is at the forefront of Army sleep research. As chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care Medicine and Sleep Medicine Service at Madigan Healthcare System in Tacoma, Wash., he has dedicated his medical career to learning more about risk factors and treatments for sleep disorders in Soldiers. Dr. Mysliwiec first envisioned himself as an Army officer when he was a young boy, inspired by patriotism during the pageantry of a Fourth of July parade. Years later, as a cadet at West Point, he decided that he wanted to practice medicine so he could help people while fulfilling his patriotic duty. He was accepted to medical school at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., and went on to do his residency in internal medicine at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. During his Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine Fellowship at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio from 1999 to 2002, Dr. Mysliwiec discovered opportunities to dive into this relatively new and under-recognized field of medicine. As Operation Iraqi Freedom began, he and his colleagues discovered Soldiers were being affected by sleeping disorders such as insomnia, coupled with symptoms of associated conditions like PTSD. They began to examine how the war affected Soldiers' sleep habits and behaviors. And it seems today the need for sleep research and treatments has never been greater. According to a recent research study by Dr. Mysliwiec and his colleagues, more than seven of every 10 Soldiers suffer from short sleep duration (SSD), a chronic condition -- defined in the study as less than seven hours of sleep per night -- that increases Soldiers' risks for a variety of health problems. The study, published in the September 2011 issue of SLEEP, the monthly, peer-reviewed journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, is one of few published articles that examine sleep disturbances associated with war or traumatic events in service members. Dr. Mysliwiec and his co-authors assessed the sleep habits of 3,152 redeployed Soldiers to compare the prevalence of co-existing medical conditions with sleep duration. Seventy-seven percent of Soldiers in the study experienced combat exposure and slept less than six hours per night. Additionally, the study revealed that certain medical conditions and health risks were strongly associated with lack of adequate sleep, including PTSD (37 percent), depression, mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), obesity and panic syndrome. Lt. Col. Mysliwiec is one of the Army's 26 sleep medicine specialists who evaluate tens of thousands of patients each year. Madigan Healthcare System, located at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Wash., conducts 1,000 sleep studies each year. The Walter Reed Army Sleep Disorder Center in Washington, D.C. is among the largest academic sleep labs in the country, and earlier this year doubled its capacity to 18 beds, conducting more than 6,500 sleep studies per year.

Lt. Col. Vincent Mysliwiec’s research interests includes: sleep medicine.