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Breath Collection from Children for Disease Biomarker Discovery
Published on: February 14, 2019
Sleep disordered breathing in children seeking orthodontic care
Ashok K Rohra1, Catherine A Demko2, Mark G Hans3
1Private practice, Cleveland, Ohio.
Introduction:
Our objective was to evaluate the prevalence of high-risk factors for sleep disordered breathing (SDB) in an orthodontic population of children. SDB is a spectrum of breathing disorders ranging from primary snoring to obstructive sleep apnea.
Methods:
The sample included 303 healthy children between the ages of 9 and 17. High risk of SDB was assessed using the Pediatric Sleep Questionnaire, a validated instrument that consists of 22 questions, and high risk is defined as positive answers to 33% or more of the questions answered. Sixteen randomly selected patients repeated the questionnaire 1 month after the initial survey for reliability.
Results:
In this sample, high-risk status on the Pediatric Sleep Questionnaire was not associated with sex, age, or race. The percentage of patients who were screened as high risk was 7.3% (95% confidence interval, 4.7%-10.6%).
Conclusions:
The results of this study suggest that approximately 7% of adolescent orthodontic patients may be at a significant risk for some form of SDB.
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