Diagnostic of Sleep Obstructive Apnea Syndrome in Children by Home Sleep Studies

Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS) in children causes chronic hematosis disorders and sleep disruption that negatively impacts growth, neurocognitive performance, and cardiovascular and metabolic functions. Its high frequency makes it a major public health problem. The clinical elements for the diagnosis are not specific and the recording of sleep and breathing (polysomnography, PSG) is the reference exam (HAS Recommendations, 2012). PSG consists in installing on a child's body electroencephalogram (EEG), electrooculogram (EOG), and electromyogram (EMG) electrodes, necessary to determine the sleep stages and sleep-wake periods, and also the sensors used to determine the presence of respiratory events during sleep such as a nasal cannula, thoracoabdominal belts, oximetry, and actimetry. At-home PSG, compared to hospital PSG, improves sleep quality and diagnostic conditions. But the PSG remains a rather anxious exam for the child due to the multitude of electrodes and sensors. Ventilatory polygraphy (PG) consists of installing only the respiratory detectors (nasal cannula, thoracoabdominal belts, oximetry, and actimetry), without the EEG, EOG, and EMG electrodes. Several studies in the literature have compared these 2 exams, PSG and PG, for diagnosing OSAS in children with varied and sometimes contradictory results.

The hypothesis of the study is that the obstructive apnea-hypopnea index (OAHI, the number of apneas, and obstructive hypopneas per hour) obtained by at-home PSG and the OAHI obtained by at-home PG are not different. For this, the sleep physician will analyze the sleep recording performed at home in routine clinical practice, in 2 ways: 1) by determining the sleep stages and computing OAHI per hour of sleep; 2) by removing EEG, EOG, and EMG signals and computing OAHI over the duration of the sleep estimated by the physician according to child's behavior during sleep (movements, artifacts) as in PG.

The main objective of this study is to demonstrate that at-home PG has the same diagnostic value as at-home PSG, i.e. OAHI obtained by at-home PG is similar to OAHI obtained by at-home PSG. The second objective is to determine the faisability in terms of the percentage of interpretable exams of at-home PSG.