[One night treatment of obstructive sleep apnea and hypopnea syndrome with nasopharyngeal airway].

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the therapeutical effect and feasibility of treating obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) with nasopharyngeal airway. METHODS: Thirty-two OSAHS patients were treated with silicone nasopharyngeal airway for one night. Each patient had Somite polysomnography (PSG) for the first night and repeated PSG with the nasopharyngeal airway treatment for the second night. PSG parameters were compared between the two nights. With normal distribution data in (x(-) +/- s), Paired-Samples t test was used. RESULTS: Overall patient tolerance of the nasopharyngeal airway for one night was 90.6% (29/32). With the nasopharyngeal airway treatment, the AHI of the 29 patients decreased from (44.7 +/- 16.0)/h to (14.6 +/- 10.0)/h, the longest time of apnea shortened from (44.3 +/- 11.5) s to (30.1 +/- 13.2) s, the lowest arterial oxygen saturation increased from (0.722 +/- 0.080) to (0.861 +/- 0.070) and the percentage of sleep time with arterial oxygen saturation < 0.90 decreased from (19.2 +/- 18.0)% to (1.5 +/- 4.0)%. Data showed obvious therapeutical effect (Paired-Samples t test, P < 0.001). The subject symptoms of the 29 patients improved obviously that night with treatment and the following day after treatment. The therapeutical successful rate for one night was 65.5% (19/29, a reduction of AHI by 50% and AHI < 20/h). The noneffective reason of the six patients was probably that they had higher proportion of tongue base obstruction. CONCLUSIONS: The single-night preliminary experiment shows that the treatment using nasopharyngeal airway has obvious therapeutical effect for OSAHS patients with retropalatal obstruction and provides clinical evidence for developing a new treatment approach in the future. In addition, based on the result of nasopharyngeal airway treatment, the obstruction level may be evaluated.