Quality-of-life improves 48-months post-adenotonsillectomy in kids with sleep apnea

The study is published in the Journal of Sleep Medicine.

Long term follow-up studies (>12 months) of changes in behavior and quality-of-life (QoL) in children with sleep disordered breathing (SDB) post-adenotonsillectomy are limited and there is a lack of consensus in the reported findings.

Therefore, Kurt Lushington and colleagues from the University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia conducted the present study with the aim to evaluate children's sleep, QoL and behavior at baseline and 6 months and 48 months post-adenotonsillectomy for clinically diagnosed SDB.

This prospective longitudinal study of children aged 3-12 years recruited from a Children's Hospital otolaryngology clinic compared polysomnographic parameters, behavior (Child Behavior Checklist; CBCL) and QoL (OSA-18) at baseline, 6 months and 48 months post-adenotonsillectomy and compared these parameters to healthy non-snoring controls recruited from the general community at the same time points.

The study revealed the following findings-

1. Sixty-four children completed sleep, behavior and QoL assessments (SDB = 20M/9F, Controls = 18M/17F) at all three time points.
2. Sleep and ventilatory parameters significantly improved in children with SDB with minimal residual obstruction evident at 48 months post-adenotonsillectomy.
3. Compared to baseline, OSA-18 scores significantly improved post-adenotonsillectomy in children with SDB and were equivalent to the scores of controls at 6 months and 48 months post-AT.
4. No significant improvement was observed in behavior in children with SDB post-adenotonsillectomy over the same time period.

Hence, the authors concluded that "baseline deficits in sleep and QoL in children with SDB were normalized at 6 months post-adenotonsillectomy and gains were maintained at 48 months post-adenotonsillectomy. Children with SDB did not show significant gains in behavior either at 6 months or 48 months post-adenotonsillectomy."