Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Traumatic Brain Injury: A Scoping Review

To better understand the relationship between traumatic brain injury (TBI) and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) were searched in May 2025 for studies reporting sleep-apnea data from sleep studies in a traumatic brain injury population.

This review was reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). Title, abstract, full-text review, and data collection were conducted by two investigators independently.

2237 articles were reviewed, and 35 presented data from sleep studies. Twenty-three studies were excluded due to overlapping data, including secondary analyses. The remaining 12 studies presented prevalence or severity of OSA in cohorts with TBI. Pooled sample sizes resulted in 1006 patients with TBI and 60 without. OSA prevalence ranged from 20% to 77% in TBI groups across studies. Three studies included comparison groups without TBI. Of these, no significant differences in OSA prevalence or AHI were found.

Daytime sleepiness, insomnia, and sleep disorders including OSA are common in the TBI population. Early diagnosis and treatment of OSA in the TBI population may have implications for recovery. More research is needed to better define the relationship between OSA and TBI.