Evaluation for disease-specific quality of life in children with sleep-disordered breathing

Objective To evaluate the impact of sleep-disordered breathing(SDB)on the quality of life(QOL)in children with SDB and investigate the value of tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy in improving their QOL.Methods Questionnaire of disease-specific quality of life for children with obstructive sleep apnea with 18 items(OSA-18)was used to evaluate QOL in 168 children with SDB within four weeks before and six to 12 months after surgical operation,and correlation between OSA-18 scores to apnea hypopnea index(AHI)and minimum oxygen saturation(MiO2)in 62 of them was evaluated with polysomnography(PSG),with 50 healthy children without snoring as controls.Results Overall scores of OSA-18 in children of SDB group before surgical operation were significantly higher than those in children of control group(t=15.12,P＜0.01).and QOL was seriously affected in 30.4 percent of the children with SDB.Scores of OSA-18 correlated to AHI and MiO2 before surgical operation.QOL was improved significantly in 73.8 percent of children with SDB after tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy.Conclusions SDB has obvious impact on pediatric QOL,which can be improved by tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy.There exists significant correlation between OSA-18 scores and objective indicators of PSG,and the former can be used as clinical diagnosis for SDB in children and as quantitative evaluation for the effectiveness of intervention. Key words: Sleep disorder;  Quality of life; Tonsillectomy;  Adenoidectomy