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How Helpful is CPAP In Terms Of Treating Childhood Obstructive Sleep Apnea?

By: Donald Saunders

Sleep apnea is an increasingly common sleep problem which currently affects approximately 18,000,000 people in America alone. That is roughly 6.62% of the population and does not take into consideration an additional 2% to 4% of the population who are believed to be suffering from sleep apnea but who are as yet undiagnosed.

What a lot of people do not know however is that there are also an amazingly large and growing number of children who suffer from sleep apnea, with estimates revealing that around 2% of all children are suffering from obstructive sleep apnea.

In the case of children sleep apnea demands especially close attention as at this crucial stage of growth and development the condition can result in learning, IQ and memory difficulties.

In many cases obstructive sleep apnea arises in no small measure from being overweight and the first step in treating the condition is therefore to lose weight. This however may not be as easy as it sounds and does not always ease the problem sufficiently.

For a lot of children the next stage is to use an oral appliance while sleeping. Oral appliances are custom made for the child and fitted by a qualified orthodontist and are intended to hold the lower jaw in a position that makes sure that the throat remains open while the child is sleeping. Improvement is again not always satisfactory with an oral appliance and a lot of children are less than happy wearing them.

The gold standard when it comes to treating obstructive sleep apnea is the CPAP machine which delivers a steady stream of air through a mask that the child wears while sleeping and which maintains an open airway.

CPAP machines are very successful but, like any treatment, they will only produce good results when they are used correctly and here we come up against a problem with children.

In a recent study a group of children undergoing CPAP treatment were followed over a six month period to establish just how closely they were following the medical advice given for using their CPAP machines. The children were subjected to sleep studies at both the beginning and end of the evaluation period and both they and their parents were questioned closely by researchers about their use of the CPAP machines. In addition, the machines that were used for the study were equipped with meters to record the use of the machines.

The study discovered that over seventy-five percent of the children did not make use of their machines every night and that even those children who used the machines every night were using them for only about 5 hours a night which was not enough to get the maximum benefit from their use. Perhaps most importantly, bearing in mind the fact that a lot of the children being evaluated were very young and thus required 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 around two hours each night.

At this stage, in spite of the fact that it is evident that many children are not receiving the maximum benefit of CPAP treatment, it remains unclear precisely why they are not using the system properly and further studies are underway to see just what improvements can be made for treating childhood obstructive sleep apnea.

Article Source: Main Articles

Help-Me-To-Sleep.com looks in detail at sleep apnea treatments and also at obstructive sleep apnea in children

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