Are Clinical Features and Severity Vital While Deciding the Treatment in Sleep Apnea Syndrome?

To the editor:

We have taken great interest in the recently published article entitled “Five-Year Subjective Outcomes of Obstructive Sleep Apnea Surgery: A Multi-Institutional Study’’ by Choi et al. [1]. Authors have studied, five-year subjective outcomes of obstructive sleep apnea surgery. However, we have some drawbacks for the aforementioned article.

First, the text lacks of the clinical and demographical features of the subjects. The authors had better clarify how they evaluated the patients? Did they perform sleep endoscopy? Which patients did receive surgical treatment or positive airway pressure? Which patients were included in the control group? We believe that this item is vital as regards the clinical relevance of this study because the readers could understand the groups clearly and comment for their clinical experience. Second, the authors did not classify the patients with respect to the severity (mild, moderate, or severe) of sleep apnea syndrome. Severity of the sleep apnea syndrome should be indisputable considered for the treatment [2]. Again, this item would be indicative for the clinicians who read this article while deciding the treatment options. Third, it is obvious that surgical or positive airway pressure treatment in sleep apnea patients would reduce the symptoms compared to nontreated patients with sleep apnea [2]. Therefore, we believe that groups had better be compared with a healthy control group. Last but not least, the patients had better be reevaluated by polysomnography tests for the clinical follow-up rather than a telephone questionnaire.