Comparing sleep studies in terms of the Apnea-Hypopnea Index using dedicated Shiny web application

Abstract

The Apnea-Hypopnea Index (AHI) is one of the most-used parameters from the sleep study that allows assessing both the severity of obstructive sleep apnea and the reliability of new devices and methods. However, in many cases, it is compared with a reference only via a correlation coefficient, or this value is at least the most emphasized. In this paper, we discuss the limitations of such an approach and list several alternative quantitative and qualitative techniques, along with their interpretations. We propose the assessment of clinical significance along with the statistical one. Qualitative analysis can be used for this purpose, or we suggest using the ranking function which enables consideration of various AHI values with different weights. It can be reliable for both adult-related and pediatric sleep studies. The dedicated Shiny web application, written in R, was developed to enable quick analysis for both physicians and statisticians.