Hi everyone~I am here hoping to have some momterpretation/dadterpretation of a sleep study report I managed to get my hands on before my son's PFT's on Monday.



I am confused about some of the information. Here's the report:



Sleep Parameters: There was 489 minutes of total study time analyzed of which 439.5 were spent in sleep for a sleep efficiency of 89.9%. Sleep efficiency after sleep onset was 93.7%. Sleep latency was 20 minutes. REM latency was 182.5 minutes. There was 24% of the sleep time spent in REM sleep, 4.9% NREM 1, 43.6% NREM 2, and 27.5% NREM 3. There were 4 REM cycles identified during the sleep study. There were 82 episodes of arousal for an arousal index of 11.2 per hour. The patient spent 35% of the total sleep time in the supine position, 57% on the right side, and 7% on the left side.



Cardiorespiratory Parameters: There were 3 central apneas with an averate duraion of 7.5 seconds with the longest being 9 seconds. There was no oxygen desaturation in association with the central apneas. There were 2 obstructive hypopneas with an average duration of 17.5 seconds with the longest being 19.1 seconds. The respiratory disturbance index was 0.7. The obstructive index was 0.3. The average oxygen saturation was 98% during REM and 97% during non-REM sleep. The average end tidal CO2 was 47 with a maximum end tidal CO2 of 52. There was 87% of the study time spent with an end tidal CO2 higher than 45 and 2% was spent with an end tidal CO2 higher than 50.



My concerns are the arousal index and the end tidal CO2. Anyone know about these two things and what they might mean?



My son is being evaluated for a neuromuscular disorder (mitochondrial myopathy).



Thank you sooooooo for your help.

how old is he?

The co2 is high but the sats are good. Sometimes if the muscles that work the lungs don't function well (respiratory muscle weakness) they can't exhale well enough to clear all the co2 out.

The rousing I'm not sure about. My son wakes up all the time (maybe every 30 minutes he's sitting up and crying, not just rousing). In all of our sleep studies, no one has mentioned it. I think for my son it's gut pain that wakes him, but I'm not sure.

My son is 2 and has Mito.

Hi MotherWhimsey

Thank you for your response. I've been trying to research the ETCO2 and have found that his is high but I guess I wonder what all of it means in regard to his health. I'm thankful he does not have apnea though. I'm sorry you're little one is dealing with Mito. My son is 9 and we've just started the long haul toward a diagnosis. It's very frustrating.

If your child is an infant, or very young, there is no good data about what the normal number of arousals are.  So generally, my understanding is that no one worries about the arousals unless the are so frequent that they prevent entry into deep sleep, which doesn't look like it was a probelm for your little one, or are extremely frequent AND accompanied by full awakenings.  I found it a bit frustrating that there is so little data available about what is normal in children's sleep studies.  It often feels to me like there is a lot of guess work going on, but I suppose the only way to gather data on "normal" sleep in young children would be to do sleep studies on lots of kids who don't have any known sleep issues, and that's a bit hard to imagine (especially for those of us who had to fight for a sleep study when we KNEW our little one's were having trouble).  It is a comfort to see that your little one's oxygen saturation remained so high!

HI.  My daughter has ROHHAD Syndrome and we just completed our 5th sleep study in the past 1 1/2 years just two weeks ago.  We are also watching her CO2 levels.  I know our last sleep study she was at a 49 for her highest level but the told us not to get concerned until we jump over 50 - which is a bit difficult of a jump.  I am waiting for her doctor to call me back to discuss her report.  But I like how you have all your statistics below.  I've never gotten anything like that from any of our reports.