Background : Because of the relatively increased prevalence of unrecognized and undiagnosed Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) cases, there is a strong need to develop an accepted screening tool for OSA in the population. This study aimed at assessing the predictive probabilities of STOP-BANG Questionnaire (SBQ) for OSA.
Methods: A cross-sectional study included 216 patients presenting to the outpatient clinic of Chest Department, Zagazig University Hospital suspected to have OSA. They were studied through: history taking, clinical examination, chest radiography, routine laboratory tests, arterial blood gases. All patients in the study completed SBQ and Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) prior doing Polysomnography (PSG) which the gold standard for the diagnosis of OSA. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values of SBQ and ESS were calculated.
Results: Of 216 screened patients; OSA patients in this study represents 90.7% of the studied cases diagnosed by PSG in which (12% mild, 19.4% moderate and 59.23% severe).89.8% of studied cases were high risk for OSA by SBQ while 65.7% were at high risk for OSA by ESS. SBQ had sensitivity of 95.3% and specificity 58.7% in diagnosis of moderate to severe OSA but 97.7% sensitivity and 63.6% specificity in diagnosis of severe OSA. ESS had sensitivity of 60.6% and specificity 73.9% in diagnosis of moderate to severe OSA but 50.8% sensitivity and 77.3% specificity in diagnosis of severe OSA.
Conclusions: SBQ has an excellent sensitivity and can predict moderate and severe OSA patients. The superiority of SBQ was obvious when compared with ESS.