diagnostic accuracy of a portable sleep apnea screener against standard polysomnography in patients referred to a sleep laboratory

Background and objective: obstructive sleep apnea (osa) is a disease with serious consequences. many portable devices have been developed to overwhelm some of limitations in the accessibility of the gold standard test for osa, polysomnography (psg). this study aimed to determine diagnostic accuracy of a portable sleep apnea screener against psg in patients of a sleep clinic. materials and methods: patients admitted to a sleep lab were recruited during a three-month period. study participants underwent one night simultaneous recording of psg and a double channel portable sleep apnea screener in the laboratory. a sleep physician scored the psgs manually according to standard criteria. portable sleep apnea screener data were analyzed automatically with the manufacturer’s proprietary software. we compared the apnea–hypopnea indices (ahi) from the psg and the portable sleep apnea screener to assess the specificity and sensitivity of the device. results: a total of 120 patients completed the study. mean ahi recorded from psg and portable device were 31.7 and 30.8, respectively. using a variety of ahi cutoff values (5, 10, 15, 20, 30 and 40), sensitivities of the portable device were 96.9, 88.6, 87.2, 84.1, 79.6, and 83.9 percent and specificities were 45.5, 71.9, 69.0, 74.5, 90.1, and 88.8 percent, respectively. the lrs+ were 1.77, 3.15, 2.81, 3.29, 8.04 and 7.49 and the lrswere 0.06, 0.15, 0.18, 0.21, 0.22 and 0.18. the aucs were 0.90, 0.88, 0.86, 0.89, 0.90, and 0.92, respectively. conclusions: in studied participants, portable device showed acceptable sensitivity and specificity in the lab when compared to the standard psg.