Night to night pulse oximetry variability in children with suspected sleep apnea

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is the most common form of sleep-disordered breathing in children. The gold standard to screen for OSA, polysomnography (PSG), requires an overnight stay in the hospital and is resource intensive. The Phone Oximeter is a non-invasive smartphone-based tool to record pulse oximetry. This portable device is able to measure patients over multiple nights while at home, causing less sleep disturbance than PSG and is able to measure night to night variability in sleep. This study analyzed the Screen My Sleep children (SMS) dataset, in which 74 children were monitored over multiple nights with the Phone Oximeter, including one night simultaneously with PSG in the hospital and two nights at home. In this study, we aim to investigate the night to night variability and assess the accuracy of the oxygen desaturation index (ODI) screening for children with significant OSA. In order to assess the performance of the ODI calculation in children, we implemented different ODIs at different desaturation levels and time durations. The variability was studied using a one-way ANOVA, and ODI's performance screening for OSA using the area under the ROC curve (AUC). The implemented ODIs provide similar OSA screening results, using different apnea/hypopnea index (AHI) thresholds, as the ODI recommended for adults by the American academy of sleep medicine (AASM). The ODI provides an AUC of around 0.77, 0.76, 0.94 and 0.97 classifying children with an AHI > 1, AHI > 5 AHI > 10 and AHI > 15, respectively. The SMS dataset shows no significant night to night variability between the two nights at home. However, when comparing with the night at the hospital, both nights at home show a decrease in the lowest SpO₂ value as well as overall SpO₂ signal quality percentage. This study shows that there is variability in SpO₂ signal between at-home versus in hospital settings.