Validation of the Apnealink Air for diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) in pregnant women in early-mid gestation

The detection of obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) in pregnant women in early-mid gestation is logistically difficult. Accurate alternates to polysomnography (PSG) in early pregnancy are not well identified. We compared the agreement between Apnealink Air (AL) and existing screening questionnaires to PSG in pregnant women ≤ 24-week gestation. Pregnant women (≤ 24-week gestation) underwent AL at home plus attended PSG in any order, completed within 7 days where practicable. AL was manually scored (AL(M)) and automatically scored (AL(A)). An apnoea-hypopnea index (AHI) ≥ 5 was considered diagnostic of OSA and an AHI ≥ 15 considered at least moderate OSA. Diagnostic analysis was undertaken (sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV)) by generating receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and an area under the curve (AUC) (95