Evaluation of the Effects of the Treatment on the Quality of Life in the Patients with Obtsructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome

This study was performed to investigate the effects of the treatment on quality of life in the patients who were diagnosed as obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) in the clinics of pulmonology and otorhinolaryngology departments at Ahmet Necdet Sezer Research and Training Hospital of Afyon Kocatepe University. The study was performed with 30 patients between January, 2009 and December, 2009.SF-36 measure of quality of life and a questionnaire including sociodemographic information were used as data collecting tools. Polisomnography (PSG) was used to diagnose OSAS. SF-36 measure of quality of life was applied to the patients diagnosed as OSAS before and after the treatment to evaluate the quality of life.SPSS 10.0 package programme (SPSS Inc., Chicago, USA) was used to analyse the data in the study. Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test was used to analyse the parameters of SF-36 quality of life before and after the treatment, and to evaluate the differences between PSG and auto CPAP. Kruskal-Wallis test was used to analyse the differences between the parameters measured before and after the treatment among the treatment groups.OSAS was found to have negative effects on the quality of life with decreasing all quality of life parameters. All the parameters except social functionality and emotional role difficulty were improved in the SF-36 measure of quality of life in the patients having CPAP treatment (p<0.05). Only general health and mental health parameters were found to increase significantly in the SF-36 measure of quality of life in the statistical analysis performed before and after the support treatment (p<0.05). No significant changes were determined in the other parameters except these ones (p>0.05). Despite the lacking number of patients statistically, improvement in terms of quality of life in all parameters was observed before and after the treatment.Negatively effected quality of life parameters were determined to decrease especially with CPAP treatment, nonethless, other treatment modalities were also determined to increase the quality of life.Key words: OSAS, obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, SF-36, quality of life