Abstract Details

We aimed to compare symptom severity for pediatric UARS and OSA patients to determine if a statistically significant difference exists.

Upper airway syndrome (UARS) is a sleep-related breathing disorder resulting in interruption in sleep continuity, poor sleep quality, and daytime neuropsychological consequences. UARS in the pediatric population has not been studied in depth and is an under-recognized condition. The difference between OSA and UARS is based on the morphology of sleep-related breathing events recorded during a sleep study (polysomnography).

Nearly 1,500 polysomnographic studies were analyzed for metrics including respiratory disturbance index (RDI), apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), and >3% oxygen desaturation index (ODI). This study’s UARS cohort included patients with AHIs under 2 and having 1 or no instances of >3% ODI. A comparative cohort of OSA patients was selected based on the average ± 1 standard deviation RDI for the UARS cohort. Symptom severity for patients was determined based on a sleep questionnaire where patients/parents selected weekly incidences of issues such as restless sleep. Total incidences per patient for the UARS and OSA cohorts were compared using a t-test with the null hypothesis being no statistically significant difference between the cohorts.  

Data for 42 UARS patients (25 girls and 17 boys ages 4 – 19) and 42 OSA patients (16 girls and 26 boys ages 4 – 28) with an average RDI of 8.39 ± 1.84 were utilized for the t-test. The resulting t statistic was 1.09 which fell below the t critical one-tail value of 1.66 and the t critical two-tail value of 1.99. Additionally, the one-tail p-value was 0.14 and the two-tail p-value was 0.28, both much greater than 0.05. The null hypothesis was not rejected.