TY - JOUR
T1 - Smartphone-based delivery of oropharyngeal exercises for treatment of snoring
T2 - a randomized controlled trial
AU - Goswami, Umesh
AU - Black, Adam
AU - Krohn, Brian
AU - Meyers, Wendy
AU - Iber, Conrad
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature.
PY - 2019/3/14
Y1 - 2019/3/14
N2 - Purpose: Upper airway exercises for snoring treatment can be effective but difficult to administer and monitor. We hypothesized that a brief, relatively simple daily upper airway exercise regimen, administered by a smartphone application, would reduce snoring and encourage compliance. Methods: Targeted vowel sounds causing tongue base movements were incorporated into a voice-controlled smartphone game application. Participants with habitual snoring, apnea hypopnea index (AHI) ≤ 14 events/h, and BMI ≤ 32 kg/m 2 were randomly assigned to perform 15 min of daily gameplay (intervention group) or 5 s of daily voice recording (control group) and to audio record their snoring for 2 nights/week for up to 12 weeks. Sounds above 60 dB were extracted from recordings for snore classification with machine learning support vector machine classifiers. Results: Sixteen patients (eight in each group) completed the protocol. Groups were similar at baseline in gender distribution (five males, three females), mean BMI (27.5 ± 3.8 vs 27.4 ± 3.8 kg/m 2 ), neck circumference (15.1 ± 1.6 vs 14.7 ± 1.7 in.), Epworth Sleepiness Score (8 ± 3.5 vs 7 ± 4.0), and AHI (9.2 ± 4.0 vs 8.2 ± 3.2 events/h). At 8 weeks, the absolute change in snoring rate (> 60 dB/h) was greater for the intervention group than the control group (− 49.3 ± 55.3 vs − 6.23 ± 23.2; p = 0.037), a 22 and 5.6% reduction, respectively. All bed partners of participants in the intervention group reported reduced snoring volume and frequency, whereas no change was reported for the control group. Conclusions: Smartphone application-administered upper airway training reduces objective and subjective snoring measures and improves sleep quality. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov; no.: NCT03264963; URL: www.clinicaltrials.gov.
AB - Purpose: Upper airway exercises for snoring treatment can be effective but difficult to administer and monitor. We hypothesized that a brief, relatively simple daily upper airway exercise regimen, administered by a smartphone application, would reduce snoring and encourage compliance. Methods: Targeted vowel sounds causing tongue base movements were incorporated into a voice-controlled smartphone game application. Participants with habitual snoring, apnea hypopnea index (AHI) ≤ 14 events/h, and BMI ≤ 32 kg/m 2 were randomly assigned to perform 15 min of daily gameplay (intervention group) or 5 s of daily voice recording (control group) and to audio record their snoring for 2 nights/week for up to 12 weeks. Sounds above 60 dB were extracted from recordings for snore classification with machine learning support vector machine classifiers. Results: Sixteen patients (eight in each group) completed the protocol. Groups were similar at baseline in gender distribution (five males, three females), mean BMI (27.5 ± 3.8 vs 27.4 ± 3.8 kg/m 2 ), neck circumference (15.1 ± 1.6 vs 14.7 ± 1.7 in.), Epworth Sleepiness Score (8 ± 3.5 vs 7 ± 4.0), and AHI (9.2 ± 4.0 vs 8.2 ± 3.2 events/h). At 8 weeks, the absolute change in snoring rate (> 60 dB/h) was greater for the intervention group than the control group (− 49.3 ± 55.3 vs − 6.23 ± 23.2; p = 0.037), a 22 and 5.6% reduction, respectively. All bed partners of participants in the intervention group reported reduced snoring volume and frequency, whereas no change was reported for the control group. Conclusions: Smartphone application-administered upper airway training reduces objective and subjective snoring measures and improves sleep quality. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov; no.: NCT03264963; URL: www.clinicaltrials.gov.
KW - Oropharyngeal exercise
KW - Randomized controlled trial
KW - Smartphone application
KW - Snoring
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U2 - 10.1007/s11325-018-1690-y
DO - 10.1007/s11325-018-1690-y
M3 - Article
C2 - 30032464
AN - SCOPUS:85050201684
SN - 1520-9512
VL - 23
SP - 243
EP - 250
JO - Sleep and Breathing
JF - Sleep and Breathing
IS - 1
ER -