Prevalence of Snoring and Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome among Nurses and Resident Doctors Working in a University Hospital

Abstract

Objective: Sleep disorders are important public health issues that decrease the individuals' quality of life by affecting their productivity and performance in a negative way. The frequency of sleep disorders among people who work shifts with irregular sleep patterns is apparent. For healthcare providers, most of whom work shifts, the available data related to obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) are insufficient. Also, this is the first study that has been conducted using an all-night polysomnography (PSG) for health staff in our country. In our study, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of snoring and OSAS among the nurses and resident doctors working at our hospital.Methods: Face-to-face interviews were performed with all nurses and resident doctors who worked at our hospital and agreed to participate in our study. All-night PSG examination was recommended to participants with concurrent witnessed apnea and/or excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) with snoring. The frequency of OSAS was evaluated in cases exposed to polysomnography, and those with and without OSAS were compared in terms of shift rates. Results:The study included 257 participants. Of these, 63% were nurses and 37% were resident doctors; overall, 34.2% of the cases were male. The mean age was 28. 8±3.7 (19-39) years and the mean body mass index was 24.03±3.85 kg/m 2 . Among the participants, the mean number of monthly night shifts was 7.6±3.8. Also, 28.8% of the participants (n=74) experienced snoring, 2.7% (n=7) had witnessed apnea, and 7.8% (n=20) had EDS (Epworth sleepiness scale≥11). Four (1.6%) of the 20 participants who were proposed to undergo PSG refused this examination. Sixteen cases were exposed to PSG (6.2%). According to the PSG results, the prevalence of OSAS was 4.7% among all healthcare providers and 5.1% among the health staff working shifts. Of the cases with OSAS, 91.7% (11/12) were working shifts while 83.3% (204/245) of those without OSAS were working shifts (p=0.697). All of the cases diagnosed with OSAS were male, but 31% of the cases without OSAS were male (p<0.001). Conclusion:For those healthcare providers who are engaged in duties requiring significant amounts of attention and concentration, the symptoms related to sleep disorders should be questioned and diagnostic evaluation and treatment should be performed for suspected cases.Keywords: Health care providers, OSAS, sleep disorders, shift work INTRODUCTIONObstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS) is characterised by the episodes of complete or partial upper respiratory airway obstruction recurring during sleep and often a reduction in blood oxygen saturation (1). The gold standard diagnostic method for this syndrome is polysomnography (PSG).Although PSG is the final diagnostic method for OSAS, most OSAS prevalence studies have been conducted based on symptoms rather than PSG results. However, there are some studies in which symptoms and PSG test results have been evaluated together in order to estimate the prevalence of OSAS. In a widespread prevalence stu...

Assessment of the risk of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome among healthcare workers

“…However, despite finding higher sleep apnoea risk in the group with higher rates and longer duration of smoking, our study found smoking to bear no statistical significance. Bearing in mind that our population consists Among a population of doctors and nurses, those cases with witnessed apnoea and daytime sleepiness were administered PSG by Soylu et al, who found OSAS prevalence at 4.7% and no association with on-call shifts (31). Similarly, applying the Berlin Questionnaire to the workers of a textile factory, Yazdı et al found no difference between shift workers and non-shift workers in terms of sleep apnoea risk (32).…”

The association between shift work and possible obstructive sleep apnea: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…One study (Yazdi et al 2014) Table 2 presents the studies included for evaluating of the association between shift work and possible OSA. None of the five studies(Aydin Guclu et al 2019;Seyedmehdi et al 2016;Soylu et al 2014;Walia et al 2012;Yazdi et al 2014) shown a significant association between shift work and possible OSA. However, a multivariate logistic regression analysis by Aydin Guclu et al revealed a negative association of on-call shift with possible OSA (Aydin Guclu et al 2019).…”

“…The initial database search (Pub-Med, Embase, and Web of Science) identified 588 articles. In addition, screening of the references led to the inclusion of three additional studies (Seyedmehdi et al 2016;Soylu et al 2014;Yazdi et al 2014). Subsequently, 125 duplicates were removed.…”

“…Table 1 shows the six studies that met our inclusion criteria ( (Walia et al 2012). Three studies (Aydin Guclu et al 2019;Seyedmehdi et al 2016;Yazdi et al 2014) conducted assessment using the Berlin questionnaire, two studies via polysomnography (Soylu et al 2014;Walia et al 2012), and one study using the Stop-BANG questionnaire (Joorabbaf et al 2017). One study (Yazdi et al 2014) Table 2 presents the studies included for evaluating of the association between shift work and possible OSA.…”

“…Furthermore, irregular work schedules could induce an inflammatory response (Amano et al 2018), which might trigger OSA occurrence (Tripathi et al 2018). Previous studies on the longitudinal association between shift work and OSA: have reported inconsistent findings (Joorabbaf et al 2017;Seyedmehdi et al 2016;Soylu et al 2014;Walia et al 2012).…”