Validation of sleep-related breathing disorder scale in Hong Kong Chinese snoring children.

The purpose of this study is to validate the previously-validated Taiwan Chinese version of Sleep-Related Breathing Disorder scale (SRBD scale) in Hong Kong Chinese snoring children. SRBD scale is an instrument used for prediction of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. (OSA) The Chinese version of SRBD scale were previously translated and validated in Taiwan. The same questionnaire were administered in a group of 102 snoring children (mean age: 10.7 and 65 boys) from a sleep laboratory in Hong Kong before their sleep studies. The SRBD scores were then validated against the results from sleep studies. By using the definition of apnea-hypopnea index larger than 1.5 as OSA, 28 children (27.5%) had polysomnography-confirmed OSA. The sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio and negative likelihood ratio of the previously validated cut-off of SRBD score > 0.33 for OSA were 0.5, 0.55, 1.12, and 0.90, respectively. The area under ROC curve was only 0.58, indicates suboptimal performance of SRBD score in predicting OSA. In summary, our study concluded that the previously reported Chinese SRBD scale is not accurate in identifying presence of OSA in Hong Kong Chinese snoring children.