Adherence to Continuous Positive Airway Pressure in Patients With Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Syndrome. Ten Year Follow up

Methods The protocol was approved (2215 CE, June, 19, 2018) by the Ethical Committee of the Istituti Clinici Scientifici (ICS) Maugeri, Pavia, Italy. All patients at admission to the Scientific Institute of Tradate gave the informed consent to the scientific use of their data.

Study Participants This study was conducted on a database of patients' discharge records, available between August, 2006 and December, 2009.

Adaptation to CPAP: titration of CPAP was performed either by full-night manual titration according to the AASM Guidelines or by automatic titration with Auto-Set systems. Further 4 day-time hours of adaptation were performed along two days. Patients underwent also four face to face sessions with the respiratory therapist, for feed-back of adaptation, optimal comprehension of procedure of CPAP management. The presence of a caregiver (if any) was strongly suggested.

Statistical Analysis An ad hoc electronic form was created to collect all study variables. Qualitative variables were described with absolute and relative (percentages) frequencies, whereas quantitative variables were summarized with means (standard deviations) or medians (interquartile ranges) based on their normal distribution, respectively.

In-between comparison for qualitative and quantitative variables was performed with the chi-squared or Fisher exact test when appropriate, and Student t or Mann-Whitney test in case of parametric or non-parametric distribution, respectively. Comparison of the temporal variation of continuous variables for the same group was assessed with Anova or Friedman's test, depending on their normal distribution.