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Most parents are unaware that many daytime and nighttime behavior problems such as a student resisting sleep, waking often at night, kicking or moving in sleep, night terrors or sleep terrors, bed-wetting, daytime sleepiness, lethargy, lack of motivation, depression, irritability, tantrums, excessive frustration, and hyperactivity could be caused, or worsened by Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome. Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS or OSA) is such a serious sleep disorder that it can cause or exacerbate many behavioral disorders, such as Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional-Defiant Disorder (ODD), Bipolar Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, Depression, and many other problems.  A high percentage of children with Autism have many sleep problems, including OSAS.  Many students with OSAS have learning disabilities, developmental delays, behavioral disorders, and some are even mentally handicapped in severe situations (which may be a result of oxygen deprivation to the brain and arterial blood flow caused by severe apnea events).  Because of its negative impact on the body and emotional well-being, it is important that every child with any of the above-mentioned problems should be screened or assessed for Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS).  If your child has any of these sleep or behavior problems and exhibits raspy breathing at night, mild snoring, or very loud snoring, please read the information below on OSAS and how you can do a sleep screening on your child/teen for OSAS and other major pediatric sleep disorders:

 

Sleep Apnea is a form of Sleep Disordered Breathing (SDB) and is a belabored effort to breathe, or an absence of breathing for at least two respiratory cycles (two breathing cycles) per hour.  The word “apnea” is Greek and means “absence of breath”. Sleep Apnea can exist in three forms:

 

(1) Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS) is the most common form where an obstruction partially blocks the air passages during sleep and causes raspy breathing or light snoring in young children at night and loud snoring in older children and teens;

 

(2) Central (Sleep) Apnea occurs most often in newborn babies, especially premature infants.  This form of Central (Sleep) Apnea occurs when the brain fails to send a message to the lungs to breathe.  The infant usually outgrows central (sleep) apnea after 3-10 months, but it occasionally occurs in older children and adults; and

 

(3) Mixed Apnea, which is a combination of Obstructive and Central Apneas occurring together in the same person.

 

This article will discuss Obstructive Sleep Apnea because this form of apnea occurs most frequently in about 2.5-to-3% of children under 8 years old, and probably more often (about 3-6%) in older children and adolescents, although we do not have enough  incidence rate studies in this population at the present time.  As high as 4% of women and 8-9% of men over 50 years of age have obstructive sleep apnea, so it is common for this age group. Anyone with obstructive sleep apnea should seek treatment because new medical research suggests that obstructive sleep apnea can cause a reduction of growth hormones released at night (in some cases of young children), lowered cognitive functioning, high blood pressure, obesity, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, and many other health problems if ignored.  It also causes inattentiveness in children and teens, as well as excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) in adolescents and adults.  EDS may be the second leading cause of vehicle accidents in this country (second only to Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol-DUI).

 

If an infant has apnea after birth, then parents should monitor (preferably with a sleep apnea monitor) their child closely and always make sure the infant sleeps on her/his back at night. If the apnea does not subside in the first year, the child may have Obstructive Sleep Apnea that should be corrected before the child enters school. Obstructive Sleep Apnea is often caused by problems in the child’s facial structure or anatomy of the airways (enlarge tonsils or adenoids, large tongue, cleft palette, recessive chin, narrow jaw, or tumors, etc...). Some of

these problems also seem to cause frequent ear or respiratory infections, although this is not true of all children with Obstructive Sleep Apnea.

Symptoms of Obstructive Sleep Apnea

 

Some of the typical symptoms of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) are raspy breathing or light snoring in younger children and loud snoring in older children, adolescents and adults; frequent open-mouth breathing in the daytime or nighttime; gasping, choking, or snorting occasionally in sleep; sweating at night; rolling
around the bed or often kicking to open up the blocked airways; and occasional pauses in breathing (which many parents do not notice).  If this blockage of the airways occurs frequently during sleep, it results in too much effort to breathe, sometimes waking the person from deep, restful sleep, or causing a deficit of oxygen reaching the arterial blood flow of the brain.  Because of this, many sleep research studies on Obstructive Sleep Apnea have reported that apnea has a negative impact on the student’s daytime functioning (alertness, concentration, activity level, work production, moods, memory, learning, and behaviors).

 

Obstructive Sleep Apnea is considered the most dangerous of all the sleep disorders; therefore, if you or your child have multiple signs of this condition existing, especially loud snoring, pauses in breathing, choking or gasping at night, it should not be ignored. is hereditary. If you have any relatives who have been diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea, and your child has some of the symptoms mentioned above, you should do the ON-LINE SCREENING to see if your child or teen has Obstructive Sleep Apnea.

 

On a positive note, Obstructive Sleep Apnea is usually correctable, and correction often results in improved

behaviors, achievement, and a happier, more cooperative child or adolescent.

 

If your child appears to have Obstructive Sleep Apnea, your prompt screening and pursuit of treatment could

help your child/teen improve his/her school performance and behaviors if the Sleep Apnea is corrected.  It

could also spare your child later health problems or accidents - maybe even save his/her life!  Thousands of

people die every year due to the negative impact of Obstructive Sleep Apnea on their health or safety.

 

To SCREEN your child or adolescent immediately for Obstructive Sleep Apnea and other common Pediatric Sleep Disorders, click “Screen Child” above to screen your child with the Sleep Disorders Inventory for Students (SDIS) (for use by parents of children between 2 and 19 years) and get valuable treatment and intervention ideas.