Sleep & breathing = Schlaf & Atmung
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Presently, the severity of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is estimated based on the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI). Unfortunately, AHI does not provide information on the severity of individual obstruction events. Previously, the severity of individual obstruction events has been suggested to be related to the outcome of the disease. In this study, we incorporate this information into AHI and test whether this novel approach would aid in discriminating patients with the highest risk. We hypothesize that the introduced adjusted AHI parameter provides a valuable supplement to AHI in the diagnosis of the severity of OSA. ⋯ The adjusted AHI parameter was found to give valuable supplementary information to AHI and to potentially improve the recognition of OSA patients with the highest risk of mortality or cardiovascular morbidity.