Gaps in Treatment and Diagnosis of Childhood Sleep-Disordered Breathing

Sleeping disorders have long been thought to be a problem that is mainly prevalent in adults but recently experts in the medical community have begun to take a bigger dive into studying obstructive sleeping disorders in children also. Obstructive sleeping disorder is particularly difficult to observe in children as they may have a range of issues and finding the severity of these issues is difficult. Observing the symptoms are easy it is observed that children that have problems sleeping sound like they are choking in their sleep or have constant heavy snoring the same symptoms as adults. Finding out the severity though requires having them engage in a sleep study, through this experts are able to observe the children and mark a significant drop in their O2 levels. In 2012 the American Academy of Pediatrics decided to make a change in the guidelines for treating children diagnosed with forms of sleep obstruction. Sleep obstruction rates have been on the rise, the reason for this is believed to be due to the increasing childhood obesity rates, because of this Dr. Schilder and her team deduced that they must review all past cases of sleep obstruction in children to find a greater understanding of the problem they were tackling. Thanks to the research of the team a greater understanding of sleep disorders has been reached but there is still much to understand and how to better service these children without needing to have them in a sleep study.