Cross approximate entropy analysis of nocturnal oximetry signals in the diagnosis of the obstructive sleep apnea syndrome.

This study is focused on the analysis of blood oxygen saturation (SaO(2)) and heart rate (HR) from nocturnal oximetry using cross approximate entropy (Cross-ApEn). We assessed its usefulness in screening obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) syndrome. We applied Cross-ApEn(m,r,N) to quantify the asynchrony between paired SaO(2) and HR records of 74 patients (44 with a positive OSA diagnosis and 30 with a negative OSA diagnosis). Cross-ApEn values were significantly lower in the OSA positive group compared with those obtained in the OSA negative group. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that the best results, in terms of diagnostic accuracy, were achieved with m = 2 and r = 0.6. With these input parameters, the optimum decision threshold was found at 1.7, where we achieved 95.5% sensitivity, 73.3% specificity and 86.5% accuracy. Further analyses should be carried out with new and larger data sets to test the usefulness of our methodology prospectively.