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Older individuals have increased oro-nasal breathing during sleep

¹ Ludwig Engel Centre for Respiratory Research, Dept of Respiratory Medicine, Westmead Hospital, and ² University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

CORRESPONDENCE: T.C. Amis, Ludwig Engel Centre for Respiratory Research, Westmead Hospital, Westmead, New South Wales, 2145, Australia. Fax: 61 298457286. E-mail: terencea@westgate.wh.usyd.edu.au

Keywords: Ageing, breathing route, sleep

Received: January 14, 2003
Accepted January 24, 2004

The study was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia

Breathing route during sleep has been studied very little, however, it has potential importance in the pathophysiology of sleep disordered breathing.

Using overnight polysomnography, with separate nasal and oral thermocouple probes, data were obtained from 41 subjects (snorers and nonsnorers; 25 male and 16 female; aged 20–66 yrs). Awake, upright, inspiratory nasal resistance (Rn) was measured using posterior rhinomanometry. Each 30-s sleep epoch (not affected by apnoeas/hypopnoeas) was scored for presence of nasal and/or oral breathing.

Overnight, seven subjects breathed nasally, one subject oro-nasally and the remainder switched between nasal and oro-nasal breathing. Oral-only breathing rarely occurred. Nasal breathing epochs were 55.79 (69.78) per cent of total sleep epochs (%TSE; median (interquartile range)), a value not significantly different to that for oro-nasal (TSE: 44.21 (68.66)%). Oro-nasal breathing was not related to snoring, sleep stage, posture, body mass index, height, weight, Rn (2.19 (1.77) cm H₂O·L^–1·sec^–1) or sex, but was positively associated with age. Subjects 40 yrs were approximately six times more likely than younger subjects to spend >50% of sleep epochs utilising oro-nasal breathing.

Ageing is associated with an increasing occurrence of oro-nasal breathing during sleep.

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