Hypertension in patients with sleep disordered breathing: cause or result? a cross-sectional analysis

Aim: Sleep disordered breathing and its most frequent presentations, cardiovascular complications of OSAS, are important, frequent and not well known causes of mortality and morbidity. When considering physiological hemodynamic processes during sleep, togetherness of HT and OSAS become an important clinical picture. To investigate the frequency of hypertension in ‘Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome’ (OSAS) patients applied to sleep laboratory. Study Design: Retrospective clinical study. Material and Methods: The test protocol consisted of the PSG recording and diagnosis. Sleep stages and respiratory events observed during sleep were evaluated according to “American Academy of Sleep Medicine” (AASM). The blood pressure measured manually by a sphygmomanometer and the measurements occur 3 times on the left arm. Data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS 23.0 statistical software package. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistical methods (frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, median, min-max). Results: Blood pressure measurements of 336 patients were evaluated. 98 (48 male, 50 female) of 336 OSAS patients were diagnosed as hypertension (29%). Hypertensive male patients had 3.3 times increased risk to be diagnosed as severe OSAS than female patients (OR=3,30; 95% CI=1,436-7,585). Together with this, hypertension frequency was found as 29% in patients with sleep disordered breathing. Conclusion: Finally; although hypertension and OSAS seem to be distinct clinical pictures, co-existence of these two disorders has been increased. Frequency of hypertension increases with increasing severity of OSAS. Hypertensive patients have increased risk for developing OSAS.