Effect of Adenotonsillectomy on Quality of Life in Children With Mild Obstructive Sleep Apnea

August 4, 2015 updated by: Eastern Virginia Medical School

In children, enlarged adenoids and/or tonsils are the most common cause of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), which is temporary blockage of breathing during sleep. Surgery to remove the tonsils and adenoids is the first-line treatment for disorder, and has been shown to cure the majority of children. However, for children with only a mild degree of OSA and few symptoms, surgery is less clear-cut, since two-thirds of these children do not develop worsening disease.

Research shows that some children with mild OSA and behavior problems are helped by removing the tonsils and adenoids. In children with all degrees of OSA, surgery has improved scores on tests that measure quality of life (QOL).

The investigators hypothesize that children with mild OSA will demonstrate changes on QOL assessment following adenotonsillectomy. These findings may help to guide the surgeon in selecting the children with mild OSA who are more likely to benefit from surgery.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a sleep-related breathing disorder that is characterized by intermittent episodes of upper airway collapse and cessation of airflow during sleep. It comprises the severest extent of a spectrum of sleep disordered breathing (SDB) which includes primary snoring and upper airway resistance syndrome. OSA is a cause cardiovascular morbidity in adults and children and a public health concern, affecting 2-4% of the middle aged population (Giles 2009) and 2-3% of children in the United States (Katz 2010). It is further associated with an increased mortality risk in adults (Giles 2009) and well-described metabolic, cardiovascular, and neuropsychological deficits in children (Katz 2010). The latter symptoms include changes in behavior, memory and cognition, and poor school performance.

In children, adenotonsillar hyperplasia is uniformly the most common cause of upper airway obstruction, and the first-line therapy for these children is adenotonsillectomy (Darrow 2007). While its effectiveness is complicated by children with obesity and other comorbidities, the most recent analyses of outcomes using postsurgical apnea-hypopnea index reveal that adenotonsillectomy alone is able to cure approximately 60% of child OSA (Friedman 2010). Improvements have also been shown with neuropsychological outcomes such as behavior, school performance, attention, and others. (Katz 2010).

"Mild OSA" is an evolving definition; it is characterized by the polysomnographic finding of AHI range greater than 1 and less than 5, defined by Katz and Marcus.(Wagner 2007) This range corresponds to the difference in the defined pathological minimum AHI for children (normal AHI < 1) and adults (normal AHI < 5). In practice, "mild OSA" remains a common reason for delaying adenotonsillectomy in an otherwise asymptomatic child, since children with mild OSA have been shown to exhibit neurocognitive functioning equivalent to controls.(Calhoun 2009) However, psychosocially these children often have problems, and adenotonsillectomy has been shown to improve these children's behavior as measured by atypicality, depression, hyperactivity, and somatization.(Mitchell 2007) Furthermore, among one-third of children with mild OSA, the natural history is progression of disease.(Li 2010)

Psychosocial problems also become manifest using health-related quality-of-life (QOL) symptom scores. The study of QOL in children with OSA has become an area of scholarly interest in the last 15 years. It was only in 2000 that an OSA-specific QOL questionnaire was first developed and validated for use in children (2000 Franco). A recent meta-analysis of QOL following adenotonsillectomy revealed significant improvements in QOL scores in patients undergoing surgery for all severity levels of OSA.(2008 Baldassari) This meta-analysis included studies using validated QOL instruments, namely the Child Health Questionnaire (CHQ) and OSA-18.

Only one study of QOL in children with mild OSA found no clinically significant differences between patients who underwent adenotonsillectomy and controls; however, disease-specific QOL instrument (such as the OSA-18) was not used.(van Staaij 2004)

The investigators hypothesize that children with mild OSA will demonstrate changes on QOL assessment following adenotonsillectomy, particularly in OSA-specific domains. If true, a threshold for preoperative QOL scores may serve as a relative indication for adenotonsillectomy in the setting of mild OSA, independent of behavioral issues.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

113

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Virginia
      • Norfolk, Virginia, United States, 23507
        • Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

3 years to 16 years (CHILD)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Any obstructive breathing symptoms such as snoring, mouth-breathing, sleep pauses, gasping, restless sleep, witnessed apneas, daytime somnolence, and enuresis.
  • Children between the ages of 3-16 years of age that have had a sleep study with an Apnea Hypopnea Index (AHI) score of 1 to 5.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Subject/LAR unwillingness to comply with all study procedures
  • Prior otolaryngologic surgery
  • Prior sleep study
  • Pregnant or breastfeeding
  • Under 3 years of age and older than 16 years of age
  • Congenital head and neck malformations or other syndromes

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: TREATMENT
  • Allocation: NON_RANDOMIZED
  • Interventional Model: PARALLEL
  • Masking: NONE

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
ACTIVE_COMPARATOR: Observation, no surgery (control)
Patients have been diagnosed with mild OSA, no intervention is done; enrolled patients may be randomly or nonrandomly placed in this group
Other: Observation alone / no intervention
Patients are observed over time, no surgery is done, subjects complete QOL questionnaires at set intervals
EXPERIMENTAL: Surgery (adenotonsillectomy)
Patients who have been diagnosed with mild OSA. Patient may be randomly assigned or non-randomly choose to be in this group; all undergo adenotonsillectomy
Procedure: Adenotonsillectomy
Tonsils and adenoids are surgically removed
Other Names:
  • T&A

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Change in Health-related Quality of Life (HR-QOL) from baseline, as measured by the OSA-18 Questionnaire and Children's Health Questionnaire (CHQ-28)
Time Frame: baseline, 3 months, 6 months
HR-QOL forms OSA-18 and CHQ-28 to be completed by subjects at the time of enrollment, and at thereafter at three and six months. Main outcome measure is the difference or change from baseline.
baseline, 3 months, 6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Eastern Virginia Medical School

Collaborators

Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Cristina M. Baldassari, MD, Eastern Virginia Medical School Dept. of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery; Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

February 1, 2011

Primary Completion (ACTUAL)

September 1, 2013

Study Completion (ACTUAL)

October 1, 2013

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

February 16, 2012

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 21, 2012

First Posted (ESTIMATE)

February 27, 2012

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (ESTIMATE)

August 5, 2015

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

August 4, 2015

Last Verified

August 1, 2015

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 10-12-FB-0266

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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