Does tongue size differ between patients with and without sleep-disordered breathing?

To determine whether there is a difference in the tongue size of patients with and without sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and to evaluate whether tongue volume correlates with body mass index (BMI), neck circumference, age, Epworth Sleepiness Scale score, or apnea-hypopnea index (AHI).

Nineteen patients (9 with SDB; 10 without SDB) were enrolled in this prospective study.

All patients completed a sleep questionnaire including the Epworth Sleepiness Scale and underwent a physical examination, portable sleep study, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study. An examiner masked to the patients' disease status measured tongue volume from the MRI films.

There was a trend for patients with SDB to have a larger tongue volume than patients without SDB (P = .065). Tongue volume only positively correlated with BMI (P = .005) and neck circumference (P = .013), but there was no correlation with age (P = .23) or AHI (P = .40).

There is a statistical trend for patients with SDB to have larger tongue size compared with non-SDB patients, but tongue size is independent of AHI and correlates significantly with BMI and neck circumference. We interpret these findings to suggest that variations in tongue size alone cannot account for disease severity and may simply reflect the larger body habitus often seen in patients with SDB.