Sleep and Breathing

, Volume 21, Issue 1, pp 45–51 | Cite as

Ulnar nerve entrapment at elbow in obstructive sleep apnea patients: a randomized controlled trial

  • Özgür Bilgin Topçuoğlu
  • Özlem Oruç
  • Gülgün Çetintaş Afşar
  • Sema Saraç
  • Kayıhan Uluç
Sleep Breathing Physiology and Disorders • Original Article
First Online:
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:

Abstract

Purpose

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a highly prevalent disease. For diagnostic and therapeutic purposes, OSA has been divided into several subgroups. Positional OSA (POSA), the most frequent subgroup (56 %), is described as overall apnea hypopnea index (AHI) ≥5 and supine AHI at least twice as high when compared to non-supine AHI. We aimed to investigate the frequency of ulnar nerve entrapment neuropathy at the elbow (UNEE) in OSA patients without clinical signs and symptoms of ulnar neuropathy and intended to find if sleeping position in OSA had an impact on UNEE development.

Methods

Fifty POSA, 48 non-positional OSA (NPOSA) patients, and 45 healthy controls without diabetes mellitus, hypothyroidism, rheumatic diseases, and cervical radiculopathy underwent nerve conduction studies.

Results

We found that UNEE was highly frequent in OSA patients (42.9 %) and significantly more frequent in moderate to severe POSA patients than mild POSA patients (65.4 vs. 33.3 %, p < 0.05). Furthermore, when compared to non-positional ones, UNEE was significantly more frequent in moderate to severe POSA patients (65.4 vs. 36.4 %, p < 0.05).

Conclusions

Our results showed that the severity of OSA in positional patients was correlated with increased frequency of UNEE. OSA patients should be informed about the predisposition of UNEE and questioned for the symptoms in periodical controls. POSA patients should be alerted about the additional effect of sleeping position on UNEE and the necessity of OSA treatment should be emphasized.

Keywords

Sleep apnea Ulnar neuropathy Positional sleep apnea Ulnar nerve entrapment Nerve conduction study Sleeping position 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Hande Alibaş for her tolerant support on statistical analysis; Mrs. Sercan Davulcu for her ambitious technical assistance in Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory; and Mrs. Birsen Tarım, Mrs. Olga Bahar Güler, and Mr. Ercan Yavuz for their kind support in the Sleep Laboratory.

Compliance with ethical standards

Funding

No funding was received for this research.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Özgür Bilgin Topçuoğlu
    • 1
    • 2
  • Özlem Oruç
    • 3
  • Gülgün Çetintaş Afşar
    • 3
  • Sema Saraç
    • 3
  • Kayıhan Uluç
    • 2
  1. 1.Department of NeurologySüreyyapaşa Chest Diseases and Thorax Surgery Training and Research HospitalMaltepeTurkey
  2. 2.Department of NeurologyMarmara University School of MedicinePendikTurkey
  3. 3.Department of Chest DiseasesSüreyyapaşa Chest Diseases and Thorax Surgery Training and Research HospitalMaltepeTurkey

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