Pediatric Home Sleep Apnea Test

A sleep-apnea test a child can do at home instead of spending a night wired up in a hospital sleep lab. Children with obstructive sleep apnea — usually caused by enlarged tonsils and adenoids — are diagnosed today by an overnight in-laboratory study, which is scarce, expensive, and often months away. This is a portable recorder a parent fits at bedtime: sensors for airflow at the nose, bands around the chest and abdomen to measure breathing effort, and a finger probe for blood oxygen, with scoring software tuned to children's thresholds rather than adults'. It deliberately leaves out the brainwave sensors a lab study uses, which is what makes it simple enough to use at home — and, as this packet shows, is also the core of the objection to it.