A total of 620 children will have undergone sleep studies at the Children’s Hospital at Erlanger by the end of 2019.
Before Dr. David Suhrbier, Erlanger’s chief of pediatric neurology, joined the hospital in 2015, those children would have had to travel to Atlanta or another city for the service, which the American Academy of Pediatrics calls the standard of care to evaluate a child for a sleep breathing disorder if they snore.
“Snoring is not a normal phenomenon for children,” Suhrbier said. “It is something that can disrupt their sleep, which leads to chronic sleep deprivation. It may also be the symptom that alerts you to an underlying sleep disorder breathing problem, and so we’re looking for obstructive sleep apnea.”
Untreated, obstructive sleep apnea can result in serious health problems, such as insulin resistance, diabetes, hypertension and heart failure. More commonly in children, he said it will cause behavioral disturbances.
“It will produce symptoms that are often mistaken for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or they will have difficulties with memory, they’ll have difficulties with academics, they’ll be more irritable and may be involved with more behavioral problems,” he said.