The influence of gender on symptoms associated with obstructive sleep apnea.

BACKGROUND: It has been reported that the clinical expression of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may differ in women and men. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of gender on reported OSA-related symptoms in a large clinical population of patients. METHODS: The database from the sleep laboratory of a tertiary care center was examined. Adult patients who had undergone a diagnostic polysomnography and completed the Berlin questionnaire, a sleep questionnaire, and the Epworth sleepiness scale were selected. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to assess the relationship between OSA-associated symptoms and different potential explanatory variables. RESULTS: The study sample included 1084 patients, median age was 53 years, 46.5% (504) were women, 72.7% (788) had OSA (apnea/hypopnea index ≥ 5), and 31.2% were obese. After adjusting for age, body mass index, and apnea/hypopnea index, men were more likely to report snoring (OR 4.06, p < 0.001), habitual or loud snoring (OR 2.34, p < 0.001; 2.14, p < 0.001, respectively) and apneas (OR 2.44, p < 0.001), than women. After controlling for multiple variables, female gender was an independent predictive factor for reported tiredness (OR 0.57, p 0.001), sleep onset insomnia (OR 0.59, p 0.0035), and morning headaches (OR 0.32, p < 0.001). Reports of excessive daytime sleepiness, nocturia, midnight insomnia, and subjective cognitive complaints were not significantly associated with gender. CONCLUSION: Women with OSA were more likely to report tiredness, initial insomnia, and morning headaches, and less likely to complain of typical OSA symptoms (snoring, apneas) than men.

Accuracy of a novel auto-CPAP device to evaluate the residual apnea-hypopnea index in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.

BACKGROUND: Patients under treatment with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) may have residual sleep apnea (RSA). OBJECTIVE: The main objective of our study was to evaluate a novel auto-CPAP for the diagnosis of RSA. METHODS: All patients referred to the sleep laboratory to undergo CPAP polysomnography were evaluated. Patients treated with oxygen or noninvasive ventilation and split-night polysomnography (PSG), PSG with artifacts, or total sleep time less than 180 min were excluded. The PSG was manually analyzed before generating the automatic report from auto-CPAP. PSG variables (respiratory disturbance index (RDI), obstructive apnea index, hypopnea index, and central apnea index) were compared with their counterparts from auto-CPAP through Bland-Altman plots and intraclass correlation coefficient. The diagnostic accuracy of autoscoring from auto-CPAP using different cutoff points of RDI (≥5 and 10) was evaluated by the receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) curve. RESULTS: The study included 114 patients (24 women; mean age and BMI, 59 years old and 33 kg/m(2); RDI and apnea/hypopnea index (AHI)-auto median, 5 and 2, respectively). The average difference between the AHI-auto and the RDI was -3.5 ± 3.9. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between the total number of central apneas, obstructive, and hypopneas between the PSG and the auto-CPAP were 0.69, 0.16, and 0.15, respectively. An AHI-auto >2 (RDI ≥ 5) or >4 (RDI ≥ 10) had an area under the ROC curve, sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, and negative for diagnosis of residual sleep apnea of 0.84/0.89, 84/81%, 82/91%, 4.5/9.5, and 0.22/0.2, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The automatic analysis from auto-CPAP (S9 Autoset) showed a good diagnostic accuracy to identify residual sleep apnea. The absolute agreement between PSG and auto-CPAP to classify the respiratory events correctly varied from very low (obstructive apneas, hypopneas) to moderate (central apneas).