Sleep disordered breathing in children seeking orthodontic care.

Introduction: Our objective was to evaluate the prevalence of high-risk factors for sleep disordered breathing (SDB) in an orthodontic population of children. SDB is a spectrum of breathing disorders ranging from primary snoring to obstructive sleep apnea.

Methods: The sample included 303 healthy children between the ages of 9 and 17. High risk of SDB was assessed using the Pediatric Sleep Questionnaire, a validated instrument that consists of 22 questions, and high risk is defined as positive answers to 33% or more of the questions answered. Sixteen randomly selected patients repeated the questionnaire 1 month after the initial survey for reliability.

Results: In this sample, high-risk status on the Pediatric Sleep Questionnaire was not associated with sex, age, or race. The percentage of patients who were screened as high risk was 7.3% (95% confidence interval, 4.7%-10.6%).

Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that approximately 7% of adolescent orthodontic patients may be at a significant risk for some form of SDB.