Relationship between Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and Difficult Intubation

One of the challenges of patients who are candidates for anesthesia is difficult intubation, which leads to severe complications and even death after anesthesia. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea and difficult intubation through systematic review and meta-analysis.

In this review article, observational articles about the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea and difficult intubation were extracted without time limit by searching national and international databases and the keywords were: difficult intubation, problematic intubation, Intra tracheal-endotracheal, difficult airway OSA, OSAS, obstructive sleep apnea, sleep breathing disorder, anesthesia, and their Persian equivalents. Data were analyzed using meta-analysis and fixed effects model. In order to study the heterogeneity and contradictions in the studies, Q Cochrane and I2 indices were used, respectively.
FINDINGS: Of the 72 found articles, 9 articles with a sample size of 1,126 and an average of 125 subjects were included in the study. The results of this study showed that the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea and difficult intubation is significant (OR = 3.88, CI95% = 2.69 – 5.61). In addition, the results of the analysis based on country showed that the highest and lowest odds ratios were observed in studies conducted in France and Canada, respectively.

The results of this study showed that there is a correlation between obstructive sleep apnea and difficult intubation.