Sleep apnea is a very common sleep problem which currently affects some 18 million people in America alone. That represents about 1 in 15 or 6.62% of the population which does not take into account an additional 2% to 4% of the population who are believed to have sleep apnea but who are as yet undiagnosed.

What a lot of people do not realize however is that there are also a surprisingly large and increasing number of children who are suffering from sleep apnea, with estimates revealing that approximately 2% of all children are suffering from obstructive sleep apnea.

In the case of children sleep apnea requires particularly close attention as at this critical stage of development apnea can result in learning, memory and IQ difficulties.

In a lot of cases obstructive sleep apnea results to a large degree from being overweight and the first step in the treatment of the problem is thus to lose a bit of weight. This however might not be as simple as it sounds and frequently fails to reduce the problem enough.

The next step for a lot of children is to use an oral appliance while sleeping. Oral appliances need to be custom made and fitted by a qualified orthodontist and are designed to hold the lower jaw in a position that makes sure that the throat is kept open during sleep. Again improvement is not always satisfactory and a lot of children are less than happy wearing them.

The best choice when it comes to the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea is the continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine which provides a steady stream of air through a mask that the child wears during sleep sleeping and which holds the airway open.

CPAP machines have proved to be extremely successful but, like the majority of treatments, they will only produce good results when they are used correctly and here we come up against a particular problem with children.

In a recently conducted study a number of children having CPAP treatment were monitored for six months to establish just how closely they followed the advice given for using their CPAP machines. The children underwent sleep studies at both the beginning and end of the study period and both they and their parents were questioned closely by the researchers about their use of the CPAP machines. Additionally, the machines that were used for the study were equipped with meters that recorded the use of the machines.

The study discovered that more than seventy-five percent of the children did not make use of their machines as intended every night and that even the relatively small number of children who used their machines every night were using the machines for only about 5 hours each night which was not sufficient to get the maximum benefit from their use. Possibly most importantly, bearing in mind the fact that a lot of the children being studied were very young and thus required parental supervision to ensure the correct use of their machines, the study discovered that the overwhelming majority of parents overestimated the use of the system by around two hours each night.

At this point, in spite of the fact that it is clear that children are not getting the full benefit of CPAP treatment, it is not clear precisely why they are not using the system correctly and additional studies are being carried out to see just what improvements can be made for the treatment of childhood obstructive sleep apnea.