Effect of Adenotonsillectomy on Quality of Life in Children with Obstructive Sleep Apnoea.

BACKGROUND: Adenotonsillectomy is one of the most frequently performed surgical procedures in children with obstructive sleep apnoea due to chronic upper airway obstruction. There is paucity of data about the impact of adenotonsillectomy on children's quality of life in Nigeria. OBJECTIVE: This study evaluated the quality of life of children pre and post adenotonsillectomy. METHODS: Caregivers of children who had adenotonsillectomy completed the obstructive sleep apnoea OSA-18 quality of life (QOL) validated questionnaire before, and 6 months after adenotonsillectomy. The OSA-18 contains 18 questions and assessed the QOL in 5 domains. RESULTS: A total of 80 (out of 105) caregivers completed and returned the questionnaires concerning 80 children (M = 38, F = 42). The age of the children ranged from 1 - 9 years with a mean ± SD of 3.67 ± 1.92 years. Caretaker preoccupation and sleep disorders were the domains with the greatest changes in their mean scores having 17.51 and 17.11 respectively. The mean ± SD of the total OSA-18 score was 89.89 ± 13.16 preoperatively, and 22.43 ± 4.31 post operatively. The changes in the scores for each domain, for each item of the OSA-18 survey, and the total score were highly significant (p ˂ 0.001). The mean of the caretaker-perceived quality of life for the children showed improvement from 3.50 to 8.50 (p ˂ 0.001). CONCLUSION: Adenotonsillectomy produced markedly significant improvements in the affected children's quality of life.