Conducting unattended home sleep studies in children with narcolepsy and healthy matched controls: a feasibility study

Abstract

Introduction: We investigated the technical feasibility and acceptability of conducting unattended home sleep studies for research purposes in children with and without narcolepsy. Methods: 23 children with narcolepsy (age: 8-15 years) and 23 healthy gender and age-matched controls were recruited. As part of a larger descriptive study called ‘The Paediatric Narcolepsy Project’, we aimed to investigate the differences in sleep architecture between children with and without narcolepsy. Children underwent home polysomnography (PSG) using a portable PSG system (Embla® Systems). A standard montage was used to measure sleep architecture with nine EEG channels (F3, F4, C3, Cz, C4, O1, O2, M1, M2), two electro-oculography (EOG) and two electromyography (EMG) channels. All children were set up in their own homes by the researcher. Study failure was defined as sleep recordings with less than four hours of interpretable sleep data. Four hours of sleep was deemed acceptable to capture two sleep cycles. Failed home studies were classified into three main areas of sensor removal, equipment failure or battery failure. Results: 22/23 children with narcolepsy (male=15, female=8) underwent home PSG. One child declined due to a previous negative PSG experience in hospital. Similarly, 22/23 matched controls underwent the sleep recording. One child became unwell during the set up, so did not proceed.16/22 (73%) of the children with narcolepsy were successfully studied and all of the control children were successfully studied. Discussion: This research has shown that conducting unattended home sleep studies to measure sleep architecture in children with narcolepsy and healthy controls for research purposes is feasible and is tolerated by the majority of children. However, our data show that unattended home sleep studies carry a risk of data loss, even when set up in the home by a trained researcher