Oral language performance in children with obstructive sleep apnea

Abstract

Introduction: In literature, there is related a possible relation between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and disorders in language aquisition and performance, but there is no investigation on the diferente levels of language skills performance.

Aim: to analyse the performance of oral language performance in OSA children.

Methods: The project was aproved by the local Ethics Comission. Children, both genders, aged 5 to 10 years old, mean age 7.7, median age 8 years old, all at follow-up at the Sleep Clinics of Otolaryngology in a University Hospital, were included. All had polysomnographic diagnosis of OSA, considering for diagnosis an Apnea-Hypopnea- Index>1e/h, classification for OSA severity was used as follows: 1< IA <5 as mild, 5<IA<10 as moderate and IA>10 as severe OSA. A psychologist evaluated analogic reasoning and non-verbal inteligence. A speech-language therapeut analyzed oral receptive language and expressive language performance.

Results: Polysomnographic studies showed an IAH beween 1.8 and 19.8 e/h (mean 9.59 e/h), mild OSA was diagnosed in 22% of the studied population, moderate OSA in 44% and severe OSA in 34%. Psychologic evaluation showed normal development, no other comorbidities were observed. 46% of the children showed low results for language comprehension performance (receptive languagem skill), whereas 85% of the children had disorders of the expressive language skills as vocabulary.

Conclusion: OSA children show a higher frequence of disorders of receptive and expressive language skills, mostly underdiagnosed and thus not treated. More multi-disciplinary investigation of OSA children are needed to foster the evidence.