Abstract
Study Objectives: Determining the presence and severity of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is based on apnea and hypopnea event rates per hour of sleep. Making this determination presents a diagnostic challenge, given that summary metrics do not consider certain factors that influence severity, such as body position and the composition of sleep stages. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 300 consecutive diagnostic PSGs performed at our center to determine the impact of body position and sleep stage on sleep apnea severity. Results: The median percent of REM sleep was 16% (reduced compared to a normal value of ∼25%). The median percent supine sleep was 65%. Fewer than half of PSGs contained > 10 min in each of the 4 possible combinations of REM/NREM and supine/non-supine. Half of patients had > 2-fold worsening of the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) in REM sleep, and 60% had > 2-fold worsening of AHI while supine. Adjusting for body position had greater impact on the AHI than adjusting for reduced REM%. Misclassification - specifically underestimation of OSA severity - is attributed more commonly to body position (20% to 40%) than to sleep stage (∼10%). Conclusions: Supine-dominance and REM-dominance commonly contribute to AHI underestimation in single-night PSGs. Misclassification of OSA severity can be mitigated in a patientspecific manner by appropriate consideration of these variables. The results have implications for the interpretation of single-night measurements in clinical practice, especially with trends toward home testing devices that may not measure body position or sleep stage.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 655-666 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine |
Volume | 8 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 15 2012 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- False-negative
- Phenotype
- REM-dominant
- Supine-dominant
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine
- Neurology
- Clinical Neurology