Title:
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The relationship between the severity of obstructive sleep apnoea hypopnoea syndrome and the craniofacial morphology in adults
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Obstructive Sleep Apnoea/Hypopnoea Syndrome (OSAHS) syndrome is a relatively common condition caused by recurrent upper airway obstruction during sleep. At this time sleep laboratory overnight multi-channel polysomnography testing provides the ‘gold’ standard for OSAHS diagnosis and subsequent treatment. Evidence suggests that the discrepancy between demand and available resources is steadily widening. The development of alternative diagnostic methods would therefore appear to be a worthy goal, and indeed this subject has received a great deal of attention within the recent literature. Differences in cranio-cervico-facial morphology in the OSAHS subjects as compared to their ‘normal’ counterparts has been a consistent finding and more recent investigations have aimed to prove the existence of a relationship between cranio-cervico-facial morphology and severity of the OSAHS condition. Evidence has been equivocal, and although a number have been suggested a correlation, none have yet converted this into a tool of clinical diagnostic significance. In this present investigation, sixty five (65) lateral cephalometric radiographs of subjects who had been referred to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary Sleep Centre for polysomnographic testing were retrospectively selected at random. To determine the existence of any correlation between the cranio-cervico-facial morphology and OSAHS severity as measured by the Apnoea Hypopnoea Index (AHI), a number of anatomic reference planes and points were used.
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