Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Elderly and its Related Factors

Obstructive sleep apnea is one of the most common sleep disorders and is a chronic disease with high prevalence in elders. The present study aimed to investigate frequency of obstructive sleep apnea and its related factors in elderly.
Material & This cross sectional study was conducted on 175 elderly lived in personal homes that were selected using cluster sampling method in 2014. The Berlin questionnaire was used for data collection. Data were analyzed by independent T-test and Chi-square tests in SPSS (version 18) Statistical software and P value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
The mean age of samples in this survey was 68.5 ± 7.5 years. The results of this study showed that 49 persons (28%) were at high risk for Obstructive sleep apnea. There was also a significant correlation between obstructive sleep apnea and gender (P=0.038), smoking (P=0.001) and neck size (P=0.007).
Given the high prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea and its consequences in elderly, screening procedure to identify high risk people in order to prevention and control of potential complications seems to be necessary.