Impact of obstructive sleep apnea on aortic disease occurrence: A meta-analysis

Aortic diseases, mainly including aortic dilatation, aortic aneurysm (AA) and aortic dissection (AD), have high morbidity and mortality. Many studies have suggested that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) acts as a candidate risk factor for aortic diseases. Thus, we performed a meta-analysis to explore comprehensively the effect of OSA on the risk of aortic disease occurrence.

We searched PubMed, Embase and Cochrane Library databases from inception to February 2022 to identify studies investigating the association between OSA and aortic diameter dilatation, the prevalence of OSA in individuals with or without AA/AD and the incidence of AA/AD in individuals with or without OSA. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) were respectively used to evaluate the quality of the included cohort and cross-sectional studies. A random or fixed effect model was used to generate pooled effects according to interstudy heterogeneity. Sensitivity analyses were performed to test the robustness of the results.

We identified 10 observational publications with 214,127 participants in this meta-analysis. OSA was significantly associated with increased aortic diameter (WMD = 1.46, 95% CI, 1.10-1.83, p < 0.001). OSA prevalence was higher in patients with AA/AD compared to their counterparts without AA/AD (OR = 1.90, 95% CI, 1.30-2.76, p = 0.001). No significant difference in the incidence of AA/AD was observed in individuals with or without OSA (RR = 0.85, 95% CI, 0.62-1.16, p = 0.307). Sensitivity analyses did not modify these results.

This meta-analysis suggests that OSA is associated with aortic diameter dilatation but does not affect AA/AD occurrence.