Y. Sivan et al., SCREENING OBSTRUCTIVE SLEEP-APNEA SYNDROME BY HOME VIDEOTAPE RECORDING IN CHILDREN, The European respiratory journal, 9(10), 1996, pp. 2127-2131
Overnight polysomnography (PSG) has been used to diagnose and assess t
he severity of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) in children, T
he aim of this study was to determine whether home video-recording of
children during sleep may be used for screening OSAS. In 58 children s
uspected of having OSAS, PSG results were compared with the correspond
ing analyses of 30 min video-recordings of each child sleeping at home
, The video-recordings were evaluated by: 1) overall investigator's cl
inical judgement; and 2) a scoring system based on noisy breathing, mo
vements, waking episodes, apnoea, chest retractions and mouth breathin
g. PSG results were highly correlated with the video test results, wit
h agreement in 49 out of 58 (84%). In 36 of the 58 children, the PSG w
as abnormal compared with 41 out of 58 abnormal video tests. The sensi
tivity of the overall investigator judgement of video test was 94% (34
out of 36) and the specificity 68% (15 out of 22), Video scores >10 w
ere highly predictive of OSAS, whilst scores <5 were associated with n
ormality, Using a stepwise logistic regression analysis, each of the s
coring variables was tested against the PSG results and an equation wa
s formulated for predicting PSG by the video test. The equation predic
ted PSG results in 49 out of 58 (84%) cases. Thirty minutes of home vi
deo-recordings during sleep is a reliable screening method for obstruc
tive sleep apnoea syndrome in children. This technique may, thus, impr
ove patient selection for polysomnography.