Polysomnographic scoring of sleep bruxism events is accurate even in the absence of video recording but unreliable with EMG-only setups.

Purpose: To determine the accuracy of scoring masticatory muscle activity (MMA) events in seven different polysomnography (PSG) setups.

Methods: Nineteen volunteers (13 females, 6 males, age 31.1 ± 12.9 years, 12 self-proclaimed bruxers) attended one-night PSG recording, supplemented with audio, video, and a separate frontal electroencephalography electrode set (FES). The same examiner scored the MMA events with seven different setups, with varying number of channels available: (1) one, (2) two, and (3) four EMG channels, (4) PSG without audio or video (PSG-N), (5) home PSG with FES and audio (FES-A), (6) PSG with audio (PSG-A), and (7) PSG with audio and video (PSG-AV). A subset (n = 10) of recordings was scored twice to determine intra-scorer reliability. MMA indices and accuracy of scoring the events in different setups were compared against PSG-AV.

Results: The intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) between PSG-AV and PSG-A was high (0.940, p < 0.001) as well as for FES-A (0.927, p < 0.001), whereas for PSG-N, it was lower (0.835, p < 0.001); for setups with only EMG channels, coefficients were very low (ICC < 0.100 for all). Intra-examiner reliability was high (ICC > 0.939 for all setups), with the exception of PSG-N (ICC = 0.764, p = 0.002). When comparing against the MMA events scored in PSG-AV, the sensitivity of MMA event recognition for PSG-A was 78.5% and specificity 95.5%, which were substantially higher than sensitivity (52.0%) and specificity (87.2%) of PSG-N.

Conclusions: MMA event scoring accuracy with PSG-A or FES-A is almost comparable to PSG-AV. Since precise event recognition is essential for accurate MMA scoring, it is evident that one cannot rely exclusively on EMG.