Introduction:

Epilepsy is a disorder characterized by a predisposition to have epileptic seizures, while sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) has been recognized as a chronic disorder of intermittent collapse of the airway that generates recurrent hypoxia. In this work, the sleep disorders scale (SA-SDQ) previously validated in English for patients with epilepsy was applied to determine its ability to detect sleep apnea in our population.

Materials and methods:

In the first stage, the cross-cultural adaptation of the SA-SDQ scale in Spanish provided by the authors was carried out into Colombian Spanish. then the information of the patients in whom polysomnography was performed between May and August 2022 was collected and the cut-off value was determined to diagnose OSAS with the SA-SDQ scale.

Results:

40 patients were able to undergo polysomnography, of which 30 (75 %) had apnea-hypopnea indices greater than five, indicating OSAS. The area under the curve was 0.790 and the SA-SDQ score of 21 provided a sensitivity of 73.3 % (CI 53.83-87.02 %) and a specificity of 80 % (CI 44.2-96, 5 %). The internal consistency was acceptable (α = 0.713).

Conclusions:

The SA-SDQ scale is a useful instrument for screening OSAS in the Colombian population suffering from epilepsy. Our results indicate that the previously suggested cut-off points (29-36 for men and 26-32 for women) may be too high in our population. We suggest a cutoff of 21 for both.

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