Comparison of Positive Screening for Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Patients With and Without Cleft Lip and Palate.

Objective: To compare the prevalence of increased risk of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in children with and without cleft lip and/or palate using a previously validated questionnaire and to examine the clinical and demographic variables that may lead to increased OSA risk.

Design: Prospective, cross-sectional study.

Participants: One hundred fifty-five cleft lip palate and 155 noncleft children between 2 and 18 years old.

Interventions: The Pediatric Sleep Questionnaire (PSQ): Sleep Related Breathing Disorder Scale was used for screening of increased OSA risk. Age, body mass index (BMI), gender, breast-feeding, and bottle-feeding durations were recorded for all patients. Cleft type, lip and palate operation times, nasoalveolar molding, or nutrition plaque usage was documented for the cleft lip palate group. Pearson χ or Fisher exact test was used for the evaluation of the qualitative variables and independent samples test or Mann Whitney test for quantitative variables. < .05 was accepted as statistically significant.

Results: The mean ages were 7.52 ± 3.91 and 7.50 ± 3.89 years for cleft lip palate and control groups, respectively. No significant differences were observed between the groups for age, gender, or BMI. Breast-feeding duration was significantly higher, and bottle-feeding duration was lower in the control group ( < .05). Mean PSQ score was significantly higher in cleft lip palate group (0.18 ± 0.12) than in control group (0.13 ± 0.1, < .001); and prevalence of increased OSA risk was significantly higher in patients with both cleft lip and palate ( = .020).

Conclusions: Positive OSA screening ratio of children with cleft lip and palate (12.2%) was significantly higher than the controls (4.5%).