Adherence to long-term non-invasive positive airway pressure therapy.

Introduction: Studies have shown varying patient adherence to long-term non-invasive positive airway pressure therapy (nPAP). We aimed to investigate adherence to long-term nPAP in a Danish cohort of patients with chronic respiratory insufficiency and/or sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) due to neuromuscular disorders (NMD), obesity-hypoventilation syndrome (OHS) or other reasons.

Methods: This cohort study included all adult patients with association to the Respiratory Center East treated with long-term nPAP: bilevel (BiPAP), automatic (APAP) and continuous (CPAP) or adaptive servo-ventilation (ASV) with a remote monitoring system in April 2022. The primary outcome was adherence, defined as a median use of nPAP ≥ 4 hrs/day in April 2022. A preplanned extended subgroup analysis was conducted for patients with data on adherence from initiation and six months onwards.

Results: The primary analysis included 241 patients, of whom 90% were diagnosed with NMD (54%) or OHS (36%). The nPAP was used ≥ 4 hrs/day by 175 patients (73%), including 22 (100%) with ASV, 129 (72%) with BiPAP and 24 (59%) with APAP/CPAP. Treatment adherence was seen in 75% of patients with NMD, 64% with OHS and 84% with other reasons for SDB. The proportion of adherent subjects in the subgroup analysis of 55 patients was relatively stable throughout the six-month period, ranging from 67% to 75% with slight intraindividual variation.

Conclusion: In this retrospective analysis of adults primarily with NMD and OHS, 73% used the prescribed nPAP therapy ≥ 4 hrs/day.

Funding: None TRIAL REGISTRATION.

Clinicaltrials: gov(NCT05379309).