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Just How Good is CPAP when It Comes To Treating Childhood Sleep Apnea?

Sleep apnea is an extremely common sleep disorder which currently affects approximately 18 million people in the USA alone. This is about 6.62% of the population which does not take into consideration an estimated additional 2% to 4% of the population who are thought to be suffering from the condition but who are as yet undiagnosed.

However, what a lot of people do not know is that there are also a surprisingly large and growing number of children who suffer from sleep apnea, with estimates revealing that about 2% of all children are suffering from sleep apnea.

When it comes to children sleep apnea deserves especially close attention as at this crucial stage of development apnea can result in learning, IQ and memory problems.

In a significant number of cases obstructive sleep apnea results to a large degree from overweight and the first stage in the treatment of the problem is thus to shed some weight. However, this might not be as simple as it sounds and does not always ease the problem enough.

For a lot of children the next step is to use an oral appliance while sleeping. These oral appliances must be custom made for the child and fitted by an orthodontist and are made to hold the lower jaw in a position which makes sure that the throat is kept open during sleep. Again improvement is not always satisfactory with an oral appliance and a lot of children are far from happy wearing them.

The gold standard when it comes to the treatment of sleep apnea is the continuous positive airway machine which delivers a steady stream of air through a mask which is worn while sleeping and which keeps the airway open.

CPAP machines have proved to be very successful but, as with any treatment, they only produce sound results if they are used correctly and here we come up against a problem with children.

In a recent study a number of children undergoing CPAP treatment were monitored for six months to see just how closely they followed the advice given for the use of their CPAP machines. The children underwent sleep studies at both the beginning and end of the study period and both they and their parents were questioned closely by researchers about their use of the machines. In addition, the machines used for the evaluation were all fitted with meters which recorded the use of the machines.

The study discovered that more than three quarters of the children did not use their machines every night and that even those children who made use of their machines every night were using the machines for only about 5 hours each night which was not enough to gain the maximum benefit from their use. Perhaps most importantly, taking into consideration the fact that a significant number of the children being studied were very young and therefore needed supervision to ensure the correct use of the machines, the study showed that the overwhelming 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 evident that children are not getting the maximum benefit of CPAP treatment, it is not clear just why they are failing to use the system properly and further studies are being conducted to see just what improvements are possible for the treatment of sleep apnea in children.