Evaluation of treatment efficacy in sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome

The evaluation of treatment efficacy consists in evaluating their efficacy to normalize sleep-related breathing disorders and neuropsychological consequences and witness complaints, patients' compliance, and the risk or side effects to benefits ratio. Polysomnographic studies are the gold standard for assessing the effects of treatments on nocturnal breathing and sleep characteristics, but the timing of control sleep studies must take into account the possible changes in treatment efficacy with time. Determining the effective positive pressure level during split nights or with a multifactorial regression model may be helpful but can result in an underestimation of the pressure setting. The utility of unassisted home sleep recordings during CPAP therapy is limited by the number of signals recorded and the absence of sleep recording. The evaluation of neuropsychological improvements has to be multifactorial to evaluate the subjective and objective effects of SAHS treatments. The compliance to CPAP therapy must be evaluated by pressure counter or time counter measurements rather than on the reported use. CPAP observance can be reliably estimated after the first month of therapy and is linked to improvement in diurnal symptoms. As for any disease, SAHS treatment must be adapted to the individual characteristics of the patient and of his or her disease. Therefore, the choice between weight loss, pharyngeal or maxillomandibular surgery, anterior mandibular positioners or tongue retaining devices, nasal CPAP, BiPAP, and tracheostomy depends on the patient's complaints and morbidity risk factors and on the respective side effects to benefits ratio of these therapeutic procedures.