A new finding suggests that the pediatric sleep study, used to diagnose pediatric sleep apnea and to measure improvement after surgery, may be an unreliable predictor of who will benefit from having an adenotonsillectomy.
About 500,000 children under age 15 have adenotonsillectomies every year in the U.S. to treat obstructive sleep apnea. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends the surgery as a first-line therapy to treat the condition, which can cause behavioral issues, cardiovascular problems, poor growth, and developmental delays. The premise is that surgically removing or reducing the severity of the obstruction to the upper airway will improve sleep and reduce other problems caused by the disorder.
In 2012, the AAP recommended that pediatricians should screen children who snore regularly for sleep apnea, and refer children suspected of having the condition for an overnight in-laboratory sleep study. The group also recommended an adenotonsillectomy based on the results of the test. But results from the new UMSOM study, published in the September issue of the journal Pediatrics, call into question those recommendations because the data they analyzed found no relationship between improvements in sleep studies following surgery and resolution of most sleep apnea symptoms.
“Resolution of an airway obstruction measured by a sleep study performed after an adenotonsillectomy has long been thought to correlate with improvement in sleep apnea symptoms, but we found this may not be the case,” said study lead author Amal Isaiah, MD, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Otorhinolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery and Pediatrics at UMSOM. “Our finding suggests that using sleep studies alone to manage sleep apnea in children may be a less than satisfactory way of determining whether surgery is warranted.”
