Objective: To evaluate the impact of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on cognition. Method: We compared the performance of 17 patients with polysomnographic diagnosis of OSA in brief cognitive tests to that of 20 healthy controls, matched for age and education. The testing battery included the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Brief Cognitive Screening Battery (BCSB), Digit-Symbol (DS) and Phonemic Verbal Fluency (FAS). Anthropometric measures and scores from the Epworth Sleepiness Scale were also recorded. Results: OSA patients performed significantly worse than controls in the MMSE, in memory items from the BCSB, in DS and also in FAS. OSA patients also exhibited higher body mass index, increased neck circumference and higher scores in Epworth Sleepiness Scale than controls. Conclusion: OSA significantly impairs cognitive performance, especially within the domains of attention, memory and executive functioning. These deficits may be detected by brief and easy-to-administer cognitive tests. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a disorder associated with episodic sleep disruptions in airway patency, followed by reduction of oxygen saturation and arousals throughout the night. In result of the chronic deprivation of sleep which it determines, OSA can lead to impairment of productivity at work, traffic accidents and also to endocrine and cardiovascular diseases [1][2][3][4][5] .The prevalence of OSA is estimated to range from 2% to 4% of the population aged 30 to 60 years, according to the first major US population-based study con-

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