The aim of this study was to see if telemetry data gathered on patients with Pierre Robin sequence (PRS) correlated with sleep study data. A retrospective review of 46 patients from a tertiary referral centre were included in the study. All patients in this study, as per protocol at this unit, had a polysomnogram (PSG) prior to any surgical airway intervention. They also had telemetry whilst waiting for the PSG, which took a variable number of days. AASM criteria was used to determine sleep apnoea, with an AHI of greater than 1 being diagnostic of sleep apnoea.
Thirty-five patients (76%) were found to have severe OSA, with an AHI of greater than 10. The results did not show any significant correlations between telemetry data and sleep study data, although patients with an average oxygen nadir below 80% did show some correlation with having an AHI of greater than 10, although this was not significant. Interestingly of the 22 patients who did not have any desaturations on telemetry below 80%, 16 still had severe OSA on PSG.
This group rightly concluded that from their data, telemetry was no substitute for PSG and could not predict severity or even presence of sleep apnoea. PSG will remain the gold standard in these cases with a high index of suspicion.
