Review Article Influence of Body Position on Severity of Obstructive Sleep Apnea: A Systematic Review

Copyright © 2013 A. Menon and M. Kumar. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Aim.The aim of this review is to determine the relationship between sleeping body posture and severity of obstructive sleep apnea. This relationship has been investigated in the past. However, the conclusions derived from some of these studies are conflicting with each other. This paper intends to summarize the reported relationships between sleep posture and various sleep indices in patients diagnosed with sleep apnea.Methods andMaterials.A systematic review of the published English literature during a 25-year period from 1983 to 2008 was performed. Results. Published data concerning the sleep apnea severity and posture in adults are limited. Supine sleep posture is consistently associated with more severe obstructive sleep apnea indices in adults. However, relationship between sleep apnea severity indices and prone posture is inconsistent. 1. Background A few prior studies have addressed the relationship between body posture and sleep apnea. It has been observed that the avoidance of supine position leads to a decrease in the number and severity of obstructive episodes [1, 2]. I