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Microarousals in patients with sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome
Author(s) -
MARTIN SASCHA E.,
ENGLEMAN HEATHER M.,
KINGSHOTT RUTH N.,
DOUGLAS NEIL J.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of sleep research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.297
H-Index - 117
eISSN - 1365-2869
pISSN - 0962-1105
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2869.1997.00276.x
Subject(s) - polysomnography , epworth sleepiness scale , excessive daytime sleepiness , multiple sleep latency test , arousal , apnea , sleep (system call) , sleep stages , medicine , psychology , anesthesia , sleep disorder , insomnia , psychiatry , operating system , neuroscience , computer science
SUMMARY Upper airway obstructions during sleep cause recurrent brief awakenings or microarousals. Standard criteria exist for sleep and respiratory event scoring, however, there are different definitions currently used to score microarousals. We therefore compared three definitions of microarousal (ranging from 1.5‐3 s in duration) and one of awakening (> 15 s). We examined their occurrence at the termination of apnoeas and hypopnoeas and their correlation with daytime sleepiness in patients with sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome (SAHS). Sixty‐three patients (aged 49, SD 10) had overnight polysomnography, multiple sleep latency tests (MSLT) and Epworth Sleepiness Scales (ESS). There were significantly more microarousals by any definition than there were awakenings (P<0.001) and there were more 1.5 s than 3 s microarousals (P<0.001). Significantly more apnoeas and hypopnoeas were terminated by 1.5 s microarousals (83% and 81%) than by 3 s microarousals (75%) (all P<0.001). Apnoea/hypopnoea index (AHI) correlated significantly with objective daytime sleepiness (p = ‐0.30, P<0.01). There were weakly significant relationships between all three microarousal definitions (‐0.24