There may be a way to screen children with Down Syndrome for sleep apnea that is less expensive than a sleep study, say researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital.

For the current study, Skotko and his team combined a range of assessment tools — including questionnaires for parents about their children’s sleep, vital signs and other physical examination measures, dental examination, imaging of craniofacial features, and measurement of metabolic markers — to determine which were most helpful in diagnosing or ruling out the presence of OSA, as determined by the standard sleep study, called a polysomnogram. They enrolled 130 children with Down syndrome, age 3 and over, participating in the Down Syndrome Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, where Skotko was based at the study’s outset.

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