Sleep clinical record: a help to rapid and accurate diagnosis of paediatric sleep disordered breathing.

Overnight polysomnography (PSG) is an expensive procedure can only be used in a minority of cases, although it remains the gold standard for the diagnosis of sleep disordered breathing (SDB). The objective of this study was to develop a simple tool, PSG validated, to screen SDB, reducing the use of PSG. For every participants we performed PSG and the Sleep Clinical Record (SCR) was fulfilled. The SCR consist of 3 points: physical examination, subjective symptoms and clinical history. The third point analyses behavioural and cognitive problems. All these items were used to create the sleep clinical score (SCS). We studied 279 children, mean age 6.1±3.1 years, 63.8% males, 27.2% with primary snoring (PS) and 72.8% with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS). The SCS was higher in OSAS group compared to PS (8.1±9.6 vs 0.4±0.3, p<0.005), correlated with apnoea hyponea index, (p=0.001) and had a sensitivity of 96.05%, positive and negative likelihood ratios were of 2.91 and of 0.06. SCS is an instrument that may effectively be used to screen patients candidates to perform a PSG study for suspected OSAS, and those with a mild form of SDB receiving an early treatment