Abstract

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is best assessed with polysomnography (PSG), but access is limited. History and physical exam are unreliable for OSA diagnosis making triage of referrals for testing challenging. Video clips recorded by parents may be useful to help determine which children need urgent PSG, but these have not been studied in detail. The goal of this study was to determine the inter-rater agreement between two pediatric sleep physicians in the assessment of OSA based on parent-recorded video clips. Two scoring methods were compared. Children aged 3-18 years referred for polysomnography for evaluation of suspected OSA were recruited to participate. Parents recorded 3 mobile video clips on a smart phone. Videos were reviewed by two independent clinicians who were blinded. Videos were scored for presence and severity of OSA using both the Monash Obstructive Sleep Apnea video score and overall clinician impression of presence/severity of OSA. Inter-rater agreement and agreement between the two scores were estimated using weighted Cohen?s Kappa. 39 children were included (mean age 8.1 years, BMI 20.6 kg/m2, 46% male). Mean Monash video score was 3.15 and clinician impression was that 28% had OSA. Agreement (weighted kappa score) between clinicians for the Monash score was 0.935 (p < 0.001) and for clinician impression was 0.973 (p< 001). Kappa scores comparing Monash and clinician scores for each rater were 0.938 and 0.825, respectively (both p< 0.001). Monash score and impression of two clinicians achieved high agreement. Scoring of video clips should be compared to PSG to determine utility of video clips to identify OSA in children.