Towards a prediction model for drug-induced sleep endoscopy as selection tool for oral appliance treatment and...

To evaluate the effect of different passive maneuvers on upper airway patency during drug-induced sleep endoscopy (DISE) compared to recent literature on treatment outcomes of positional therapy (PT), oral appliance therapy (OAT), and combined treatment in obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) patients.

A retrospective, single-center cohort study including a consecutive series of 200 OSA patients. All patients underwent DISE with and without manually performed jaw thrust and lateral head rotation by using the VOTE classification. The effect of these maneuvers were analyzed by using the sum VOTE score comparing non-positional (NPP) and positional OSA patients (PP).

Two hundred patients were included (80.5% male) with a mean age of 50.1 ± 11.7 years, a BMI of 27.0 ± 3.1 kg/m², and a median AHI of 19.2 events per hour. Forty-four percent of the patients were NPP; of the remaining 56%, 34% was diagnosed with supine isolated and 66% with supine predominant POSA. Manually performed jaw thrust showed a reduction of sum VOTE score of 66.7% in all subgroups. The effect of lateral head rotation was a reduction of 33.3% in NPP and supine predominant PP and 50% in supine isolated PP. Combining these maneuvers a reduction of more than 75% was seen in all patients.

The present model leaves room for improvement. The effect of manually performed jaw thrust is greater and the effect of lateral head rotation alone is less than what was expected compared to recent literature on treatment outcome of OAT, PT, and combined treatment.