Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) After Adenotonsillectomy in Children

Obstructive sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) affects at least 2-3% of children and may have substantial adverse impact on behavior and cognition. Adenotonsillectomy (AT), the second most common surgical procedure in children, is now performed more often for suspected SDB than for any other indication. However, recent studies among an increasingly obese population now show something alarming: many if not most children still have SDB after AT, and many still suffer from residual neurobehavioral morbidity. Furthermore, the investigators' ongoing, 12-year, NIH-funded research has shown that standard preoperative polysomnographic measures of SDB do not consistently predict post-AT improvement in behavior and cognition. This may arise in part because many children after AT still have SDB, and because linear relationships between standard SDB measures and neurobehavioral morbidity may not exist. Even at subtle levels, SDB may promote significant neurobehavioral morbidity. Some have suggested that polysomnography may be more important after AT than before AT. However, in practice few children receive polysomnography before AT, and even fewer after AT, when continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) could still provide definitive relief from SDB. Preliminary data from our group suggest that CPAP after AT is well-tolerated by most children and may provide significant benefit. However, virtually no published evidence exists to address critical clinical questions: which children benefit most from CPAP after AT; what role can clinical symptoms or polysomnography play in that determination; and what neurobehavioral gains are achieved by CPAP after AT? The investigators therefore will undertake a highly practical, clinical study with two main goals: (1) to assess the extent that behavior, cognition, and sleepiness in children can improve with CPAP after AT, and (2) to identify which patients stand to gain most from post-operative assessment and treatment. This research will use reversible SDB-related neurobehavioral morbidity as the criteria by which to judge the utility of clinical symptoms and polysomnography in identification of candidates for CPAP after AT.