Sleep apnea, the risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and potential benefits of continuous positive airway pressure therapy: A nationwide study

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelForskningfagfællebedømt

Objective
Patients with sleep apnea (SA) are at increased cardiovascular risk. However, little is known about the risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in patients with SA. Therefore, we studied the relation between SA patients who did and did not receive continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy with OHCA in the general population.

Methods
Using nationwide databases, we conducted a nested case-control study with OHCA-cases of presumed cardiac causes and age/sex/OHCA-date matched non-OHCA-controls from the general population. Conditional logistic regression models with adjustments for well-known OHCA risk factors were performed to generate odds ratio (OR) of OHCA comparing patients with SA receiving and not receiving CPAP therapy with individuals without SA.

Results
We identified 46,578 OHCA-cases and 232,890 matched non-OHCA-controls [mean: 71 years, 68.8% men]. Compared to subjects without SA, having SA without CPAP therapy was associated with increased odds of OHCA after controlling for relevant confounders (OR:1.20, 95%-Cl:1.06–1.36), while having SA with CPAP therapy was not associated with OHCA (OR:1.04, 95%-Cl:0.93–1.36). Regardless of CPAP therapy, age and sex did not significantly influence our findings. Our findings were confirmed in: (I) patients with neither ischemic heart disease nor heart failure (untreated SA, OR:1.24, 95%-CI:1.04–1.47; SA with CPAP, OR:1.08, 95%-CI:0.93–1.25); and (II) in patients without cardiovascular disease (untreated SA, OR:1.33, 95%-CI:1.07–1.65; SA with CPAP, OR:1.14, 95%-CI:0.94–1.39).

Conclusion
SA not treated with CPAP was associated with OHCA, while no increased risk of OHCA was found for SA patients treated with CPAP.

Keywords
Sudden cardiac arrestSleep apneaCardiac electrophysiologyCPAP
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummer110174
TidsskriftResuscitation
ISSN0300-9572
DOI
StatusE-pub ahead of print - 2024

Bibliografisk note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s)

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