A consultation with a sleep specialist may allow patients and family members to discuss their child's problem and treatment options with another source and allow the family to make a more informed decision about treatment. The delay for performing a sleep study is no longer a factor since it should be done at least 2 months after surgery, providing ample time for healing and equilibration of the patient's weight. The suggestion that audiotaping or videotaping a child with potential obstructive sleep apnea can replace the diagnostic value of a sleep study misses the point. Recording the patient will only allow sampling of the night's sleep. Abnormal breathing episodes can be episodic, occurring, for example, only in rapid eye movement sleep.
Sampling techniques are prone to false-negative results by their very nature.
A child may sleep 8 to 12 hours or more each night, depending on age. You can purchase audiotapes for that amount, but you still have to pay somebody to objectively review the recording and make the diagnosis, which will never be as diagnostic as the results of a polysomnogram. A pediatric polysomnogram is a tool that the treating physician can use to evaluate the patient's sleep status objectively. Pediatric obstructive sleep apnea is essentially the same disease that occurs in adults but with some different symptoms. In adult sleep medicine, our surgical colleagues are an integral component of the multidisciplinary evaluation and treatment protocol offered to the patient.