22/07/2024
Ottawa, Ontario — Monday July 22, 2024
Early diagnosis and treatment of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in children are critical. Left untreated, this serious condition is associated with high blood pressure, behavioural problems and a lower quality of life.
A sleep study is the best diagnostic test for OSA, but there are significant barriers in accessing the test and questionnaires and overnight oxygen level recordings are limited in their ability to identify OSA,
Thanks to a $1.1 million Canadian Institutes of Health Research Spring project grant, Dr. Sherri Katz, Senior Scientist at the CHEO Research Institute and Division Chief of Pediatric Respirology at CHEO, will study how short video clips, recorded by parents using a smartphone in their own home, may be a useful tool to identify children at risk of OSA who would most benefit from a sleep study.
“We believe that the video clips taken by caregivers will be able to predict moderate-to-severe OSA in children and that they will be better than standard clinical questionnaires or oxygen recordings currently used,” said Dr. Katz, Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. “Prioritizing which kids are at most risk of OSA and getting them in sooner for a sleep test could lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment, which will minimize the risk of long-term complications for these kids.”
Access and wait times for pediatric sleep tests can be long, therefore being able to prioritize those at highest risk of pediatric OSA, which occurs in one to four per cent of children, will help improve access to care and reduce backlogs.
This multicentre study will run for five years and include 625 children referred for sleep studies for suspected OSA at CHEO, Montreal Children’s Hospital, SickKids, and Stollery Children’s Hospital.
Parents will be asked to record short video clips of their child sleeping, which will be rated for the presence and severity of OSA. Children will then undergo a sleep study, and parents will complete a questionnaire about sleep symptoms. Oxygen level recordings will be extracted from the sleep study and the diagnostic accuracy of video clips will be determined and compared to the questionnaire and oxygen level recording.
Project: Video Clips for Diagnostic Evaluation of Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Children (VIDEO)
Principal Investigators: Sherri Katz, Refika Ersu
Co-investigators: Reshma Amin, Nicholas Barrowman, Evelyn J. Constantin, Marielena DiBartolo, Joanna MacLean, Indra E. Narang, Dawid Zielinski
Amount/term funded: $1,148,983 over 5 years
Priority announcements
The CHEO Research Institute also received funding for two priority grant announcements:
Viralyzing transgenes to improve oncolytic immunotherapy – breast cancer research
Principal Investigators: Tommy Alain, Tyson Graber
Co-investigators: Dung H. Hoang
Amount/term funded: $100,000 over 1 year
Exploring the education of gd T cells to foster their therapeutic potential – infection and immunity research
Principal Investigator: Zakia Djaoud
Co-investigators: Alexandre Blais
Amount/term funded: $100,000 over 1 year