Sleep, breathing, and cephalometrics in older children and young adults. Part II -- Response to nasal occlusion.
OBJECTIVE
We postulated that nasal occlusion would provide a challenge enabling us to assess factors predisposing development of sleep apnea in older children/adolescents and young adults. Factors of interest included sex, age, body mass index (BMI), tonsillar hypertrophy, and cephalometric measurements.


METHODS
Sleep and breathing variables were examined and compared for four groups of subjects between one baseline night and one night of nasal occlusion in a sleep research laboratory.


METHODS
Healthy, normal boys (n=23, mean age=13.3+/-2.1 years), girls (n=22, mean age=13.8+/-1.8 years), men (n=23, mean age=22.2+/-1.5 years), and women (n=24, mean age=22.4+/-1.8 years) were studied.


RESULTS
The following sleep and sleep-related breathing measures showed significant increases in all four groups from baseline to occlusion: percentage of stage 1, number of transient arousals, transient arousal index, apnea index, respiratory disturbance index (RDI), and mean apnea length. No significant relationships were found between occlusion-night RDI and tonsillar size, cephalometric variables, or BMI, either singly or in combination.


CONCLUSIONS
Subjects' responses to nasal occlusion varied: most demonstrated a minimal and clinically insignificant increase in RDI; few showed a marked increase in RDI. Significant increases of sleep fragmentation -- even in the absence of frankly disturbed breathing -- indicate that nasal occlusion may secondarily affect waking function if prolonged over a series of nights.
Millman
R P
RP
Sleep and Chronobiology Research Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, E.P. Bradley Hospital/Brown University, East Providence, RI 02915, USA.
Acebo
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C
Rosenberg
C
C
Carskadon
M A
MA
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D015992:Body Mass Index; D002508:Cephalometry; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015508:Nasal Obstruction / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012119:Respiration / Q000502:physiology*; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*