Prolonged periodic breathing: significance in sleep studies.

Periodic breathing (PB) is a pattern of breathing that is frequently recognized in infants being studied for possible sleep apnea. Infants presenting to a sleep laboratory over a 3 1/2-year period who had evidence on their initial study of prolonged (greater than 15% of total sleep time) PB were prospectively studied in an effort to determine the significance of this pattern of breathing. Of the 331 infants studied, 40 demonstrated prolonged PB. Sixteen of these infants, who were of 37 weeks' gestation or greater at birth and did not receive pharmacologic therapy, were studied on at least two occasions (group 1). Of the remaining 24 infants, 11 were treated with methylxanthines by their attending physician (group 2), and 13 did not return for sequential studies (group 3). All infants who were of less than 37 weeks' gestation at birth were separately evaluated (group 4). For group 1, who were studied at a mean age of 15 postnatal weeks, there was a mean of 36.4% periodicity which decreased on the second study to 18.0%. By the fourth study, this had decreased to 9.2%. In group 2, there was a mean of 41.3% periodicity during the first study which decreased to 6.4% on the second study. Infants of group 3 had a mean of 31.4% PB on their initial study and the premature infants, group 4, had 30.1% PB. All infants showed a decrease in PB with sequential studies and no infant was known to have died of sudden infant death syndrome or any other disorder in the first year of life.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)