The Effect of Sleep Stage and Position on Postoperative Polysomnography

Polysomnography is the gold standard for the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), evaluation of its severity, and assessment of treatment response. Sleep apnea syndrome has been defined as an apnea hypopnea index (AHI) greater than 5 with the presence of associated symptoms such as excessive daytime sleepiness. Because the correlation between AHI and morbidity and mortality is well established, it is frequently used as the primary parameter to describe surgical treatment outcomes. However, recent reports suggest that polysomnographic indices such as AHI may be discordant with quality of life measures [1-4].