[Evaluation of upper airway resilience under Müller respiration by non-endoscopic method]

To evaluate diagnostic significance of the noninvasive and objective 320-slice CT scan in the high pharynx resilience in the patients with obstructive sleep apnea/hypopnea syndrome.

Fifty patients with OSAHS and 10 patients with pharyngeal paraesthesia were included in the study. 320 slice CT scan was used to measure the sagittal diameters, transverse diameters and sectional area of the retropalatal region, retroglossal region. Calculating the pharynx wall resilience. Analyzing the correlativity of pharynx wall resilience, BMI and AHI. Fiber endoscope was used to assess the subsidence percentage of the pharynx wall.

Between OSAHS patients and pharyngeal paraesthesia patients, there was obviously difference in the retropalatal region and retroglossal region upper airway. The pharynx wall resiliences of retropalatal region were much more than that of retroglossal region. The later pharynx wall resiliences were much more than the fore-to-aft pharynx wall resiliences in the retropalatal region. BMI, AHI and the pharynx wall resilience were positive correlative to each other. But AHI and the pharynx wall resilience was nonlinear correlative. There was a good concordance between the pharynx wall resilience detected by 320CT and subsidence percentage of the pharynx wall detected by fiber endoscope.

320 slice CT is a kind of simple, rapid and objective method to localize the high resilience area of upper respiratory tract, which can be benefit to the clinical diagnosis, the etiological study and the treatment of OSAHS. Based on physical examination, we propose that only one time of CT scan to the patients' upper airway at the Muller' stage is enough to localize the stenosis area, which can reduce radiation dosage dramatically.