Health status in subjects with suspected obstructive sleep apnea and comparison with a general population

The purpose of this study was to assess health status (HS) in patients with clinical suspicion of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in order to estimate the dose response relationship between HS and OSA severity, and to compare HS in this clinical cohort with a general population sample (N = 5000). Patients referred to an overnight sleep study due to suspected OSA, whom also responded to the SF-36 questionnaire, were included (N = 418). Of these, 194 showed normal findings, while 111, 60 and 53 demonstrated mild, moderate and severe OSA, respectively. Mean age was 47.5 (SD 11.9) and 69% were males. Only the mental health scale (p = 0.015) and mental component summary score (p = 0.023) were associated with OSA severity. This association, however, disappeared in multivariable analysis. All SF-36 scores in the sleep study group were lower than that of the general population sample, in both unadjusted and multivariable linear regression analysis. In this study, there was a lack of association between OSA severity and general HS. However, as a whole, patients in this clinical population referred to an overnight sleep study due to suspected OSA had impaired HS on all scales compared to a general population, with greatest differences in the vitality domain.