title: Hypoxia in sleeping children: overnight studies can be reduced to 4 hours without loss of clinical significance.
abstract: Twelve recordings of overnight pulse oximetry representing a range of severity of obstructive sleep disturbance were evaluated by 7 experienced clinicians. Each recording was then scored by counting the number of minutes in each hour affected at any time by a fall in saturation to below 90%. Comparison of the clinical evaluation and the overall scores gave a clear level of 5 minutes per hour at and above which all the assessors agreed that the charts had clinically important desaturation. Overnight pulse oximetry was then performed on 25 children aged between 12 months and 10 years about to undergo adenotonsillectomy. The charts were scored by the method above with a score of 5 or more indicating a positive result for hypoxic episodes. The scores for shortened analysis periods of 1, 2, 3 and 4 hours duration were compared with the overall score and no cases which were negative, up to and including 4 hours, became positive in the overall result. Thus recording pulse oximetry for 4 hours provides sufficiently accurate information for clinical purposes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthetics, University of Birmingham, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, UK.
authors.forename: T C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: D W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Proops
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pearman
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hutton
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D000860:Hypoxia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007223:Infant; D009551:Night Care; D010092:Oximetry; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012891:Sleep Apnea Syndromes / Q000175:diagnosis*; D013997:Time Factors