Length of Individual Apnea Events Is Increased by Supine Position and Modulated by Severity of Obstructive Sleep Apnea.

Positional obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is common among OSA patients. In severe OSA, the obstruction events are longer in supine compared to nonsupine positions. Corresponding scientific information on mild and moderate OSA is lacking.

RemLogic plug-in enables clinical application of apnea-hypopnea index adjusted for severity of individual obstruction events.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is diagnosed based on obstruction event incidence, albeit individual obstruction event severity is connected to increased mortality rate. Adjusted-AHI parameter, incorporating number and severity of obstruction events, has shown good potential, but is calculated using custom-made MATLAB(®) functions. To allow its clinical use, this study introduces the RemLogic™ plug-in.

Effect of oxygen desaturation threshold on determination of OSA severity during weight loss.

Purpose: Weight loss leads to improvement of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), based on frequency of respiratory events (apnea-hypopnea index, AHI). However, AHI does not incorporate the severity of individual obstruction events. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine suggests two alternative oxygen desaturation thresholds (ODT) for scoring of hypopneas.

Effect of different oxygen desaturation threshold levels on hypopnea scoring and classification of severity of sleep apnea.

Purpose: Recently, there has been a debate about the rules used to score hypopnea events. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of different oxygen desaturation threshold (ODT) levels on the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) and on a recently introduced parameter, adjusted AHI. Adjusted AHI incorporates the severity of individual breathing cessation events.

The severity of individual obstruction events is related to increased mortality rate in severe obstructive sleep apnea.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is linked to an increased mortality rate. However, the severity of individual obstruction events is rarely considered quantitatively in clinical practice. We hypothesized that OSA with especially severe obstruction events would predispose a patient to greater health risks than OSA with a similar apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), but lower severity of individual events.