Incidence of daytime sleepiness in asthmatic patients using the Epworth scale

Daytime sleepiness is a common symptom in sleep disorders, including sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). Asthmatic patients can also have difficulties controlling the disease even with adequate treatment. It is therefore important to carry out a study to assess the incidence of daytime sleepiness in these patients. The aim of this study is to assess the incidence of daytime sleepiness in asthmatic patients using the Epworth sleepiness scale. The methodology of this work consists of a cross-sectional study with a consecutive sample of 21 individuals (mean age 46.4 ± 13.6 years), including 15 women. These patients were selected from the pulmonology outpatient clinic for the treatment of Difficult Control Asthma (DCA) at Santa Casa de Misericórdia in the State of São Paulo. The Epworth sleepiness scale was used, and the participants also underwent nocturnal polysomnography. The results showed an average sleep efficiency of 72.9% (standard deviation of 15.9), indicating that the patients had a reasonable amount of sleep, close to the recommended actual time of 85%. The distribution of sleep time between the NREM and REM stages showed a slight predominance of NREM sleep (14.5%) over REM sleep. Peripheral oxygen saturation during sleep was 93.8% in the NREM stage and 83.0% in the REM stage. There was a high number of micro-awakenings (83.2%). When analyzing the Epworth sleepiness scale, it was found that 42.85% of the participants obtained a score of 0-9, 14.38% obtained a score of 9-12, 9.52% obtained a score of 12-15 and 33.34% obtained a score of more than 15. In conclusion, we can state that the Epworth sleepiness scale can be applied to patients with difficult-to-control asthma to assess the presence of daytime sleepiness.