Is Change in Mouth Opening Related to Change in Quality of Life in Children With Type 1 Obstructive Sleep Apnea After Adenotonsillectomy? The JawChild Prospective Cohort Study

STUDY BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Obstructive Sleep Disordered Breathing (oSDB) encompasses a range of abnormal breathing patterns during sleep, from snoring to complete airway obstruction, caused by increased upper airway resistance and pharyngeal collapsibility. Although often considered an adult disease, oSDB also occurs in children, and has been linked to metabolic, cardiovascular, and neurocognitive morbidity, and lower quality of life in pediatric patients. This study focuses on children who have Type 1 Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA1), a condition where a person's airway can become blocked repeatedly during sleep. The common treatment for OSA1 is adenotonsillectomy.

OSA1 is diagnosed and evaluated using the Apnea-Hypopnea Index (AHI), which is considered an indicator of OSA severity. Polysomnography (PSG), the gold standard for measuring AHI, is a time consuming and costly procedure that is impractical for follow-up in a pediatric population. Furthermore, AHI has not been shown to be related to quality of life in children with OSA1. For this reason, interest in using measuring mouth opening, instead of PSG, to evaluate OSA1 has grown. Mouth opening reflects mouth breathing, a common clinical feature of OSA1 that is linked to respiratory effort. In children with OSA1, improvements in mouth breathing have been associated with better behavior, decreased sleepiness, and increased quality of life.

The Jawac© is a novel technology that can be used to reliably measure jaw activity, which is used to evaluate mouth opening, in children. Previous research has shown that changes in respiratory effort-related arousal after adenotonsillectomy were related to changes in mandibular movement. However, no previous research has identified a straightforward, objective biomarker that correlates with quality of life and surgical outcomes in children undergoing adenotonsillectomy. Given the observed links between mouth opening, respiratory effort, and quality of life in pediatric patients, the primary objective of this clinical trial is to determine if changes in quality of life are linked to changes in mouth opening after adenotonsillectomy in a group of children who were diagnosed with OSA1. The secondary aims include studying the relationships between change in quality of life and changes in common Jawac and PSG metrics as well as evaluating variations in quality of life, changes in clinical symptoms, and the relationship between Jawac and PSG metrics in the same population of children who undergo adenotonsillectomy.

STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS This research study is non-randomized, monocentric, prospective, and features a single non-blinded arm due to its exploratory and descriptive nature. During the pre-inclusion visit (V0), surgeons will screen patients for eligibility to participate in the study. At the inclusion visit (V1), informed consent will be obtained from one parent or legal guardian of each participant, who will then complete questionnaires about their children's quality of life and sleep-related symptoms. Participating children will undergo PSG combined with Jawac measurements. The adenotonsillectomy will occur during the surgical visit (V2). Three months later, at the follow-up visit (V3), patients will again undergo PSG with Jawac measurements, and the same parent or legal guardian will complete the same questionnaires. Four months post-surgery, patients will have a follow-up consultation with the surgeon (V4). The study protocol adheres to national guidelines for standard OSA management, with the addition of the questionnaires at V1 and V3, and the PSG with Jaw activity (measured using the Jawac) measurement at V3. Only one extra consultation (V3) is added to the standard patient pathway, thus a low rate of study discontinuation is anticipated. Data from patients who discontinue or deviate from the intervention will be excluded. Adverse events will be documented throughout the study at V1, V2, V3, and V4.