Sleep apnea is an increasingly common sleep disorder which currently affects about 18 million people in the US alone. This represents roughly 1 in 15 or 6.62% of the population and does not include an additional 2% to 4% of the population who are thought to be suffering from sleep apnea but who are as yet undiagnosed.
What a lot of people do not know however is that there are also an amazingly large and growing number of children who are suffering from sleep apnea, with estimates showing that approximately 2% of all children suffer from sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea in children calls for especially close attention because at this crucial stage of development the condition can result in learning, IQ and memory difficulties.
In a significant number of cases obstructive sleep apnea arises to a large degree from overweight and the first stage in treating the condition is therefore to shed some weight. However, this might not be as simple as it sounds and often fails to ease the problem enough.
For a lot of children the next stage is the use of an oral appliance when sleeping. These oral appliances have to be custom made and fitted by a qualified orthodontist and are designed to hold the lower jaw in a position that ensures that the throat remains open during sleep. Again improvement is sometimes less than satisfactory with an oral appliance and a lot of children are less than happy wearing them.
The best choice when it comes to treating sleep apnea is the continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine which provides a steady stream of air through a mask that the child wears while sleeping and which maintains an open airway.
CPAP machines are extremely successful although, like any treatment, they will only produce good results when they are used correctly and here we come up against a particular problem with children.
In a recently conducted study several children undergoing CPAP treatment were monitored for six months to see just how closely they followed the advice they were given for using their CPAP machines. The children were subjected to sleep studies at the beginning and end of the evaluation period and they and their parents were questioned closely by the researchers about their use of the machines. In addition, the machines which were used for the evaluation were all fitted with meters to record the use of the machines.
The study reported that more than three quarters of the children did not use their machines every night and that even the relatively small number of children who used their machines every night were using the machines for only about 5 hours each night which was insufficient to get the maximum benefit from their use. Perhaps most importantly, taking into consideration the fact that many of the children being evaluated were very young and thus required supervision to ensure the correct use of the machines, the study showed that the vast majority of parents overestimated the use of the system by in the region of two hours every night.
At this point, in spite of the fact that it is clear that many children are not enjoying the maximum benefit of CPAP treatment, it is unclear exactly why they are not using the system correctly and further studies are being carried out to see just what improvements are possible for the treatment of childhood sleep apnea.
![[Valid RSS feed]](/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
